Travel Opinion Leaders and Seekers
While opinion leadership has been recognized as important in tourism, there has been very little empirical research investigating the phenomenon. Given new developments in social media technologies, it is especially important to understand whether travel
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Abstract While opinion leadership has been recognized as important in tourism, there has been very little empirical research investigating the phenomenon. Given new developments in social media technologies, it is especially important to understand whether travel opinion leadership and seeking are drivers of specific social media perceptions and behaviours. Based on an online survey of US online travellers, this paper seeks to identifY travel opinion leaders and seekers and their characteristics. Further, the research conducted investigated linkages between travel opinion leadership/ seeking and travel social media use. The findings suggest that travel opinion leadership and seeking are distinct but connected. Both opinion leaders and seekers are technology savvy, young, educated, involved in travel planning and engaged in social media use for travel. What distinguishes opinion leaders is their greater travel experience and greater trust in official sources of travel information. Keywords: opinion leader; opinion seeker; travel; social media; online contents creation.
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Introduction
Recent developments in social media technologies enable travelers to more easily advocate and share their opinions online. Travelers today can actively create and distribute travel information through the Internet (O'Connor, 2008; Sigala, 2008). Litvin, Goldsmith and Pan (2008) identified studying both originators as well as listeners as central to researching electronic travel word-of-mouth (e WOM) processes. Clearly, not everyone is a travel opinion leader online. Y 00 and Gretzel (2008) found that those who passively consume travel e-WOM outnumber by far those who actively contribute and also differ from them in terms of demographics and travel involvement. Understanding who seeks travel opinions and who is asked for travel advice is crucial in understanding the dynamics of eWOM through social media.
R. Law et al. (eds.), Information and Communication Technologies in Tourism 2011 © Springer-Verlag/Wien 2011
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Despite the increasing significance of online opinion leadership and seeking, only limited studies have investigated the role and characteristics of opinion leaders and seekers. Especially in the tourism literature opinion leadership has been mentioned but not extensively researched. An exception is the study by Jamrozy, Backman and Backman (1996) that finds opinion leaders in nature-tourism to be more involved in travel and travel information search. An investigation in the context of travel is necessary as opinion leadership has been identified to be domain-specific (Goldsmith & Flynn, 1993). Given the growing importance of social media activities among travelers, it is vital to understand online opinion leadership from a conceptual point of view. In addition, it is of great practical relevance to know who these travel opinion leaders are and what characteristics their counterparts, the travel opinion seekers, have. Consequently, this study sought to test a scale to measure opinion leadership and seeking in the travel
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