AbstractThe increasing use of web 2

Abstract
The increasing use of web 2.0 applications has generated numerous online user reviews. Prior studies have revealed the influence of user-generated reviews on the sales of products such as CDs, books, and movies. However, the influence of online user-generated reviews in the tourism industry is still largely unknown both to tourism researchers and practitioners. To bridge this knowledge gap in tourism management, we conducted an empirical study to identify the impact of online user-generated reviews on business performance using data extracted from a major online travel agency in China. The empirical findings show that traveler reviews have a significant impact on online sales, with a 10 percent increase in traveler review ratings boosting online bookings by more than five percent. Our results highlight the importance of online user-generated reviews to business performance in tourism.

Keywords
User-generated content; Traveler behavior; Hotel; Online bookings
1. Introduction
The rapid growth of web 2.0 applications, which empower Internet users and allow two-way information communications in travel and tourism, has generated an enormous number of online user-generated contents (UGC) on hotels, travel destinations, and travel services (Sigala, 2008). At the same time, an increasing number of travelers are using the Internet for travel planning (Litvin et al., 2008 and Sigala et al., 2001). Results of large-scale surveys have shown that searching for travel-related information is one of the most popular online activities (Pew Internet and American Life Project, 2006). In addition, Complete, Inc (2007) found one-third of travel purchasers visited a message board, forum, or online community before their online travel purchasing because they believed online reviews would be helpful to their purchase decision. Forrester Research (2006) estimated that 34.7 percent of total online spending is related to travel, and a recent survey indicated that more than 74 percent of travelers use the comments of other consumers as information sources when planning trips for pleasure (Gretzel & Yoo, 2008). In total, online reviews influence more than US$10 billion in online travel purchases every year (Compete, 2007), and it is thus important to assess their effect. A few recently conducted studies have demonstrated that online user-generated reviews have a significant influence on sales of consumer products (Chevlier and Mayzlin, 2006 and Duan et al., 2008). A key insight deduced from previous studies is that the influence of user reviews is particularly significant for experience goods (Klein, 1998), as their quality is often unknown before consumption (Katz and Lazarsfeld, 1955 and Nelson, 1970) and consumers have to rely on word-of-mouth and online reviews to make inferences about such goods. Most services and products offered by the hotel industry are experience goods – the quality of tour operations and hotels, for example, is only known after the service has been consumed (Litvin et al., 2008). However, there is a very limited number of prior studies in the existing tourism literature on the impact of online user-generated reviews on the performance of firms, despite the fact that studies on this topic would help tourism practitioners to better understand the importance of online user reviews for their businesses.

Using data extracted from major online travel agencies in China, we conducted an empirical study to bridge this research gap in tourism management. The data, which consisted of consumer-generated reviews, were retrieved from www.ctrip.com (NASDAQ: CTRP), a major online travel agency in China. One of the challenges in the study was that it is difficult, if not impossible, to obtain private booking data of online travelers. In previous studies, a variety of proxies have been used to infer product sales from observed data. Ghose and Ipeirotis (2006), as well as Chevlier and Mayzlin (2006), for example, used Amazon.com’s sales rankings to infer product sales.

In our study, a unique feature of ctrip.com that allows only travelers who book hotel rooms through its website to post reviews is leveraged. As such, the number of reviews is expected to be closely correlated to the number of room sales. We, therefore, use the number of reviews as a proxy for hotel room sales (Ghose and Ipeirotis, 2006, Ye et al., 2009a and Ye et al., 2009b). To further investigate the applicability of the approach, empirical data with actual online sales were collected and analyzed to test the model robustness in this study.

The aim of the study was to identify the impact of online word-of-mouth on sales in the tourism and hotel industries. We tested the influence of the valence and variance of online consumer-generated reviews based on the number of online bookings for the hotels included in this study. Our work was designed to extend current research on the effect of online consumer-generated reviews to encompass experience goods in tourism. The study also makes a methodological contribution to tourism research by validating the proxy for the number of online bookings using empirical data.

The rest of this paper is organized as follows. In Section 2, we provide a review of previous studies and the proposed hypotheses. We then describe the research model and data in Section 3. The results are reported in Section 4. Section 5 assesses the robustness of the proxy for the number of online bookings. Theoretical and practical implications of the results are described in Section 6, and the last section offers some concluding comments.

2. Background and research hypotheses
Web 2.0 and UGC have been, and will likely be, increasingly changing the way that people search, find, read, gather, share, develop, and consume information. As such, they provide tremendous opportunities for E-commerce (Sigala, 2008). In E-commerce, UGC may serve as a new form of word-of-mouth for products/services or their providers. The importance of word-of-mouth on business has been widely discussed and researched, particularly since the worldwide adoption of Internet technologies, which have revolutionized the distribution and influence of word-of-mouth (Anderson, 1998, Goldenberg et al., 2001, Stokes and Lomax, 2002 and Zhu and Zhang, 2006). Through the Internet, individuals can make their ideas and opinions more easily accessible to other Internet users (Dellarocas, 2003). Up to 2004, 44 percent of U.S. Internet users had presented their thoughts on the Internet, and the majority of consumers reported that they trusted the opinions which were posted online by other consumers (Gretzel & Yoo, 2008).

Online user-generated reviews about travel destinations, hotels, and tourism services have become important sources of information for travelers (Pan, MacLaurin, & Crotts, 2007), with reports indicating that each year hundreds of millions of potential visitors consult online reviews (Tripadvisor.com., 2006). Among these potential visitors, 84 percent were affected by reviews when making their travel reservations (Travelindustrywire.com., 2007). Goldenberg et al. (2001) stressed that consumer decision-making processes are strongly influenced by word-of-mouth from other consumers. Gretzel and Yoo (2008) further found that reviews provided by other travelers are often perceived by readers to be more up-to-date, enjoyable, and reliable than information provided by travel service providers.

Additionally, Zhu and Zhang (2006), as well as Cheung, Shek, and Sia (2004) pointed out that online user-generated reviews are of use to both consumers and online retailers. Likewise, Dellarocas (2003) indicated that online word-of-mouth can have important implications for managers in terms of brand building, product development, and quality assurance. Findings of recent studies show different effects of online reviews on the product/service sales. For instance, using a difference-in-difference model, Chevlier and Mayzlin (2006) examined the effect of consumer reviews of book sales on Amazon.com and Barnesandnoble.com, and found that word-of-mouth significantly influence product sales. Duan et al. (2008) conducted a panel data analysis with movie box office revenue data, and findings show that the valence of online user reviews has no significant impact on movie box office revenues meanwhile box office sales are significantly influenced by the volume of online reviews. In the tourism industry, Vermeulen and Seegers (2009) revealed that positive online reviews improve the perception of hotels among potential consumers. Since online traveler reviews are an important source of information to both travelers and tourism firms, researchers have attempted to analyze and understand online traveler reviews by sophisticated technologies (Govers and Go, 2005, Ye et al., 2009a and Ye et al., 2009b).

Ghose and Ipeirotis (2006) studied the influence of online reviews on product sales for a variety of consumer products, and found that the subjectivity and polarity of the ratings in reviews had a significant influence on online sales of certain products. They explained their findings using the cognitive load theory, and argued that certain types of online reviews reduce the cognitive load of the reader, thereby generating higher sales. A study conducted by Dickinger and Mazanec (2008) showed that the recommendations of friends and online reviews are the most important factors that influence online hotel bookings. Despite the increasing importance of online user-generated content, a number of studies have reported that online user-generated reviews are perceived as being lower in credibility than traditional word-of-mouth due to the absence of source cues on the Internet (Dellarocas, 2003 and Smith et al., 2005). As such, the influence of consumer reviews merits further investigation.

Previous studies have shown that online travel reviews may influence the decisions of travelers (Vermeulen and Se

ผลลัพธ์ (ไทย) 1:

บทคัดย่อการใช้เพิ่มขึ้นของโปรแกรมประยุกต์เว็บ 2.0 ได้สร้างรีวิวจากผู้ใช้ที่ออนไลน์มากมาย การศึกษาก่อนหน้านี้ได้เปิดเผยอิทธิพลของรีวิวจากผู้ใช้ที่สร้างยอดขายของผลิตภัณฑ์เช่นซีดี หนังสือ และภาพยนตร์ อย่างไรก็ตาม อิทธิพลของการรีวิวโดยผู้ใช้ออนไลน์ในอุตสาหกรรมท่องเที่ยวไม่ยังคงส่วนใหญ่รู้จัก ทั้งนักวิจัยการท่องเที่ยวและผู้ การเพิ่มช่องว่างในการจัดการท่องเที่ยว เราดำเนินการศึกษาผลการระบุผลกระทบของการรีวิวโดยผู้ใช้ออนไลน์ประสิทธิภาพทางธุรกิจโดยใช้ข้อมูลที่ดึงจากสำคัญออนไลน์ตัวแทนท่องเที่ยวในประเทศจีน ค้นพบประจักษ์แสดงว่า รีวิวจากนักท่องเที่ยวมีผลกระทบสำคัญต่อการขายออนไลน์ กับการเพิ่มขึ้น 10 เปอร์เซ็นต์ในการจัดอันดับทบทวนนักส่งเสริมการจองห้องพักออนไลน์มากกว่า 5 เปอร์เซ็นต์ ผลของเราเน้นความสำคัญของการรีวิวโดยผู้ใช้ออนไลน์ผลการดำเนินงานธุรกิจท่องเที่ยวคำสำคัญผู้ใช้สร้างเนื้อหา พฤติกรรมนักท่องเที่ยว โรงแรม จองห้องพักออนไลน์1. บทนำThe rapid growth of web 2.0 applications, which empower Internet users and allow two-way information communications in travel and tourism, has generated an enormous number of online user-generated contents (UGC) on hotels, travel destinations, and travel services (Sigala, 2008). At the same time, an increasing number of travelers are using the Internet for travel planning (Litvin et al., 2008 and Sigala et al., 2001). Results of large-scale surveys have shown that searching for travel-related information is one of the most popular online activities (Pew Internet and American Life Project, 2006). In addition, Complete, Inc (2007) found one-third of travel purchasers visited a message board, forum, or online community before their online travel purchasing because they believed online reviews would be helpful to their purchase decision. Forrester Research (2006) estimated that 34.7 percent of total online spending is related to travel, and a recent survey indicated that more than 74 percent of travelers use the comments of other consumers as information sources when planning trips for pleasure (Gretzel & Yoo, 2008). In total, online reviews influence more than US$10 billion in online travel purchases every year (Compete, 2007), and it is thus important to assess their effect. A few recently conducted studies have demonstrated that online user-generated reviews have a significant influence on sales of consumer products (Chevlier and Mayzlin, 2006 and Duan et al., 2008). A key insight deduced from previous studies is that the influence of user reviews is particularly significant for experience goods (Klein, 1998), as their quality is often unknown before consumption (Katz and Lazarsfeld, 1955 and Nelson, 1970) and consumers have to rely on word-of-mouth and online reviews to make inferences about such goods. Most services and products offered by the hotel industry are experience goods – the quality of tour operations and hotels, for example, is only known after the service has been consumed (Litvin et al., 2008). However, there is a very limited number of prior studies in the existing tourism literature on the impact of online user-generated reviews on the performance of firms, despite the fact that studies on this topic would help tourism practitioners to better understand the importance of online user reviews for their businesses.Using data extracted from major online travel agencies in China, we conducted an empirical study to bridge this research gap in tourism management. The data, which consisted of consumer-generated reviews, were retrieved from www.ctrip.com (NASDAQ: CTRP), a major online travel agency in China. One of the challenges in the study was that it is difficult, if not impossible, to obtain private booking data of online travelers. In previous studies, a variety of proxies have been used to infer product sales from observed data. Ghose and Ipeirotis (2006), as well as Chevlier and Mayzlin (2006), for example, used Amazon.com’s sales rankings to infer product sales.In our study, a unique feature of ctrip.com that allows only travelers who book hotel rooms through its website to post reviews is leveraged. As such, the number of reviews is expected to be closely correlated to the number of room sales. We, therefore, use the number of reviews as a proxy for hotel room sales (Ghose and Ipeirotis, 2006, Ye et al., 2009a and Ye et al., 2009b). To further investigate the applicability of the approach, empirical data with actual online sales were collected and analyzed to test the model robustness in this study.The aim of the study was to identify the impact of online word-of-mouth on sales in the tourism and hotel industries. We tested the influence of the valence and variance of online consumer-generated reviews based on the number of online bookings for the hotels included in this study. Our work was designed to extend current research on the effect of online consumer-generated reviews to encompass experience goods in tourism. The study also makes a methodological contribution to tourism research by validating the proxy for the number of online bookings using empirical data.
The rest of this paper is organized as follows. In Section 2, we provide a review of previous studies and the proposed hypotheses. We then describe the research model and data in Section 3. The results are reported in Section 4. Section 5 assesses the robustness of the proxy for the number of online bookings. Theoretical and practical implications of the results are described in Section 6, and the last section offers some concluding comments.

2. Background and research hypotheses
Web 2.0 and UGC have been, and will likely be, increasingly changing the way that people search, find, read, gather, share, develop, and consume information. As such, they provide tremendous opportunities for E-commerce (Sigala, 2008). In E-commerce, UGC may serve as a new form of word-of-mouth for products/services or their providers. The importance of word-of-mouth on business has been widely discussed and researched, particularly since the worldwide adoption of Internet technologies, which have revolutionized the distribution and influence of word-of-mouth (Anderson, 1998, Goldenberg et al., 2001, Stokes and Lomax, 2002 and Zhu and Zhang, 2006). Through the Internet, individuals can make their ideas and opinions more easily accessible to other Internet users (Dellarocas, 2003). Up to 2004, 44 percent of U.S. Internet users had presented their thoughts on the Internet, and the majority of consumers reported that they trusted the opinions which were posted online by other consumers (Gretzel & Yoo, 2008).

Online user-generated reviews about travel destinations, hotels, and tourism services have become important sources of information for travelers (Pan, MacLaurin, & Crotts, 2007), with reports indicating that each year hundreds of millions of potential visitors consult online reviews (Tripadvisor.com., 2006). Among these potential visitors, 84 percent were affected by reviews when making their travel reservations (Travelindustrywire.com., 2007). Goldenberg et al. (2001) stressed that consumer decision-making processes are strongly influenced by word-of-mouth from other consumers. Gretzel and Yoo (2008) further found that reviews provided by other travelers are often perceived by readers to be more up-to-date, enjoyable, and reliable than information provided by travel service providers.

Additionally, Zhu and Zhang (2006), as well as Cheung, Shek, and Sia (2004) pointed out that online user-generated reviews are of use to both consumers and online retailers. Likewise, Dellarocas (2003) indicated that online word-of-mouth can have important implications for managers in terms of brand building, product development, and quality assurance. Findings of recent studies show different effects of online reviews on the product/service sales. For instance, using a difference-in-difference model, Chevlier and Mayzlin (2006) examined the effect of consumer reviews of book sales on Amazon.com and Barnesandnoble.com, and found that word-of-mouth significantly influence product sales. Duan et al. (2008) conducted a panel data analysis with movie box office revenue data, and findings show that the valence of online user reviews has no significant impact on movie box office revenues meanwhile box office sales are significantly influenced by the volume of online reviews. In the tourism industry, Vermeulen and Seegers (2009) revealed that positive online reviews improve the perception of hotels among potential consumers. Since online traveler reviews are an important source of information to both travelers and tourism firms, researchers have attempted to analyze and understand online traveler reviews by sophisticated technologies (Govers and Go, 2005, Ye et al., 2009a and Ye et al., 2009b).

Ghose and Ipeirotis (2006) studied the influence of online reviews on product sales for a variety of consumer products, and found that the subjectivity and polarity of the ratings in reviews had a significant influence on online sales of certain products. They explained their findings using the cognitive load theory, and argued that certain types of online reviews reduce the cognitive load of the reader, thereby generating higher sales. A study conducted by Dickinger and Mazanec (2008) showed that the recommendations of friends and online reviews are the most important factors that influence online hotel bookings. Despite the increasing importance of online user-generated content, a number of studies have reported that online user-generated reviews are perceived as being lower in credibility than traditional word-of-mouth due to the absence of source cues on the Internet (Dellarocas, 2003 and Smith et al., 2005). As such, the influence of consumer reviews merits further investigation.

Previous studies have shown that online travel reviews may influence the decisions of travelers (Vermeulen and Se

ผลลัพธ์ (ไทย) 3:

นามธรรม
ใช้ที่เพิ่มขึ้นของ Web 2.0 การใช้งานได้สร้างความคิดเห็นผู้ใช้ออนไลน์มากมาย การศึกษาก่อนหน้านี้ได้แสดงให้เห็นอิทธิพลของผู้ใช้สร้างบทวิจารณ์ในยอดขายของผลิตภัณฑ์เช่นซีดี , หนังสือและภาพยนตร์ อย่างไรก็ตาม อิทธิพลของผู้ใช้ออนไลน์ที่สร้างความคิดเห็น ในอุตสาหกรรมการท่องเที่ยวยังคงเป็นส่วนใหญ่ ไม่รู้จักทั้งนักวิจัยและผู้ปฏิบัติงานด้านการท่องเที่ยว .ที่สะพานช่องว่างความรู้นี้ในการจัดการการท่องเที่ยว เราทำการศึกษาเชิงประจักษ์เพื่อระบุผลกระทบของผู้ใช้ออนไลน์ที่สร้างความคิดเห็นต่อประสิทธิภาพธุรกิจ โดยดึงข้อมูลจากสาขาออนไลน์บริษัทท่องเที่ยวในจีน ผลการวิจัยเชิงประจักษ์แสดงให้เห็นว่านักท่องเที่ยววิจารณ์มีผลกระทบในการขายออนไลน์กับ 10 เปอร์เซ็นต์จะทำให้นักท่องเที่ยวให้คะแนนรีวิวการจองมากกว่า 5 เปอร์เซ็นต์ ผลของเราเน้นความสำคัญของผู้ใช้ออนไลน์ที่สร้างขึ้นจากการปฏิบัติธุรกิจการท่องเที่ยว

คำสำคัญ
ผู้ใช้สร้างเนื้อหา พฤติกรรมนักท่องเที่ยว ; โรงแรม ; การจองออนไลน์
1 บทนำ
การเจริญเติบโตอย่างรวดเร็วของเว็บ 2.0 โปรแกรมซึ่งช่วยให้ผู้ใช้อินเทอร์เน็ตและให้สื่อสารข้อมูลสองทางในการเดินทางและการท่องเที่ยว ได้สร้างมหาศาลจำนวนผู้ใช้ออนไลน์สร้างเนื้อหา ( UGC ) ในโรงแรมที่พัก ท่องเที่ยว สถานที่ และบริการท่องเที่ยว ( sigala , 2008 ) ในเวลาเดียวกัน , การเพิ่มจำนวนของนักท่องเที่ยวที่ใช้อินเทอร์เน็ตสำหรับการวางแผนการเดินทาง ( litvin et al . , 2008   และ sigala et al . , 2001 )ผลของการสำรวจขนาดใหญ่ที่ได้แสดงให้เห็นว่าการค้นหาข้อมูลที่เกี่ยวข้องการท่องเที่ยวเป็นหนึ่งในกิจกรรมออนไลน์ที่เป็นที่นิยมมากที่สุด ( Pew Internet และโครงการชีวิตชาวอเมริกัน 2006 ) นอกจากนี้ , สมบูรณ์ , Inc ( 2007 ) พบว่าหนึ่งในสามของผู้ที่เดินทางเข้าเยี่ยมชมกระดานข้อความ , ฟอรั่ม