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- Title
The Persuasion Effect of Hotel Online Reviews on Regulatory-focus Tourist.
- Authors
TANG Xuemei; LAI Shengqiang
- Abstract
In the era of Web 2.0, hotel guests can write reviews about a hotel on the Internet, introducing their consumption experience. Now, most hotels can be booked online, however, further details of which are rarely learned by tourists. To ensure correct booking, online reviews are necessary for tourists to read. Online review is a form of electronic word-of-mouth (EWOM), which has become the main factor affecting sales of product. The valence and briefness of EWOM contents are two important factors influencing EWOM effects, which is still proved to be controversial in their effects in many literatures. Some scholars point out that negative and detailed reviews are more influential than the positive and detailed ones, but other scholars point out positive and brief reviews are more influential than negative and brief reviews. In order to fill the gap, based on the regulatory focus theory, we studied the persuasive effect of hotel reviews online. According to the regulatory focus theory, positive- oriented customers are apt to pursue profits, whereas prevention- focused people are more likely to avoid losses, and these two types of people have different sensitivities to positive and negative results. Therefore, we put forward the hypothesis that positive- oriented people are inclined to read positive or brief reviews, while prevention-focused people are more likely to read negative or detailed reviews. A 2 (valence: positive, negative) x 2(regulatory focus: promotion focused, prevention focused) x 2 (content: brief, detailed) lab experiment was been done to verify all hypotheses. Participants were asked to read 10 online reviews about an anonymous hotel, and then to evaluate the persuasiveness of these online reviews. 280 tourists participated in the experiment, and 243 questionnaires were found to be effective, with an effective rate of 86.7%. By analysis of variance, we have found that: (1) negative reviews have more powerful persuasiveness than positive reviews. But regulatory focus types of people have the moderated effect, positive reviews have more influences on promotion- focused people, negative reviews have more influences on prevention-focused people; (2) Detailed reviews have more powerful persuasive effects than that of brief reviews, which is similar to opinions in most of previous literatures. But the persuasive effect was moderated by the regulatory focus types of people. Promotion-focused people are accustomed to use the eager strategy and like to do something quickly, so they prefer brief reviews. By contrast, prevention-focused people are accustomed to use vigilant strategy and like to avoid losses, so they prefer detailed reviews. Based on the research results, some suggestions are given as follows: (1) tourism enterprises shall monitor online reviews and respond the negative word-of-mouth in order to eliminate the negative influences and protect the reputations of their brands; (2) If consumers are promotion-focused people, or if promotion- focused tourism products are sold, tourism enterprises should encourage consumers to write brief online reviews; (3) When tourism enterprises respond to the reviews online, they should write briefly to respond to positive reviews, and write elaborately to respond to the negative reviews.
- Subjects
HOTEL reservation systems; WEB 2.0 research; TOURISM research; HOTEL guests
- Publication
Tourism Tribune / Lvyou Xuekan, 2014, Vol 29, Issue 10, p61
- ISSN
1002-5006
- Publication type
Article
- DOI
10.3969/j.issn.1002-5006.2014.10.007