In recent years, with the ready availability of online consumer reviews, consumers have increasingly resorted to online reviews for information and decision support. In fact, according to Forrester Research, more than 80 percent of online consumers consult others reviews when making purchasing decisions. Online consumer reviews have become a major assistive mechanism for consumer decision support. Travel purchases such as hotel booking and restaurant selection are such products where consumers increasingly resort to online reviews for information.
Meanwhile travelers are increasingly willing to share online their views of and experiences with tourism and hospitality services. With an increasingly large amount of consumer generated information available, one potential challenge is information overload and information trustworthiness on the part of the consumers as these e-WOMs are essentially generated by strangers, albeit fellow travelers. Consumers spend a large amount of time to filter out irrelevant information.
Research on how prospective hotel consumers consult with and process information provided by online reviews has shown that consumers tend to use simplified heuristics to arrive at judgments about the desirability of potential hotel choices. Researchers observe that when a review site provides a reviewers demographics (e.g., age and gender) alongside a hotel review, prospective hotel customers perceive the review more useful, more trustworthy, and have a higher tendency to select the hotel among similar alternatives.
ANSWER THE FOLLWING QUESTIONS:
1. How does traveler-generated information assist travel and hospitality consumers?
2. Why do you think providing reviewer demographic information may improve consumers likelihood to favor a hotel product?
3. What cues do prospective hotel consumers use to arrive at quality judgment?
4. What quantifiable information are provided by tripadvisor.com? Have they effectively simplified cues for traveler decision-making? Can they further improve their review platform design?