While understanding how to best communicate with consumers via SNS is important,
it is also critical for tourism and hospitality businesses to leverage the
interpersonal influence resulting from consumer-to-consumer communication
on SNS. This is especially because of prevalent research results suggesting that
when making purchase decision, consumers tend to rely more on information
provided by other consumers rather than companies’ persuasive messages
(Litvin et al., 2008; Ong, 2012; Pantelidis, 2010) and that information shared
by other consumers are perceived more trustworthy than those provided by
marketers (Feick & Price, 1987).