Study Of Communication On Electronic Word-of-mouth Of Destination

Word of mouth is the most oldest and effective communication that is oral, person-to-person communication between a perceived non-commercial communicator and a receiver concerning a brand, a product, or a service offered for sale. Marketers consider it as the most important power in marketing and the final test on the relationship between consumers and service providers. With the development of computer technology, especially internet, electronic word of mouth is emerged. Electronic word of mouth is any positive or negative statement made by potential, actual, or former customers about a product or company, which is made available to a multitude of people and institutions via the internet. Tourism, especially destination choice is considered as one of the biggest industry that may be influenced by word of mouth, owing to tourism characteristics as intangibility, heterogeneity, and simultaneous production and consumption. Electronic word of mouth transfer revolutionary traditional word-of-moth marketing approach and inferior position to one of the most element of marketing max in destination. Although academia and practice have been recognized its importance and imminence that electronic word of mouth influence destination image, marketing condition, crisis management and customer relationship management. The previous studies focused on the credibility of electronic word of mouth, that is little attention on the characteristics, the influencing factors of communication power and marketing model.The article is divided into six parts:firstly, we review the current research about word of mouth, electronic word of mouth and word of mouth in tourism based on the related research at home and abroad and point out their limitations, especially little study pay attention to chinese marketing environment. Secondly, the research focuses on tourists' behavior on online information search and communication approach of electronic word of mouth. Tourists' behavior of online information search is the premise of electronic word of mouth marketing. Online information search impenetrate every step of tourism, compose of a series of sub-decision. And the elements of online information search include tourists, search engine and online information space. The paper constructs the model of online information search and promulgation. Thirdly, we discuss the types, characteristics and the importance of destination electronic word of mouth, compare to mobile phone. we analyze the development and evolvement of electronic word of mouth in tourism, point out seven types of electronic word of mouth in tourism that is one of the most communication channels for tourists and the model of tourists'information search in internet, and this idea is tested by baidu search engine as a case study of nine cities in mainland of china. And then the paper choose the three internet forum as the proxy of electronic word of mouth that is sina tourism forum, tianya tourism forum and 17u tourism forum, collect the posts that were posted on November,2010, and analyze the characteristics of electronic word of mouth about destination. Fourthly, it is the study of influencing factors of communication power and model. We utilize the grounded theory to analyze the posts, point out the influencing factors of communication effect about electronic word of mouth, and using the AMOS and SPSS Software. We demonstrate the theory hypotheses discuss the main research results and inside reason. Fifthly, we suggest the public marketing strategy and steps of electronic word of mouth on destination, and emphasize the marketing morality. Finally, we conclude the whole research, point out the limitations and suggestions for the future research.The main results of this study are as following:firstly, electronic word of destination is one of the most communication channels of tourists. Furthermore the results show that forum is more influencing than blog.Secondly, electronic word of mouth of destination has some unique characteristics, such as visualization, entertainment, magnified and durative of influence and distribution. The results show that it is more visualization than mobile telephone product, and the two products test the forum is more entertainment.Thirdly, the results show some factors influence the communication power of electronic word of mouth, including senders' expertise and impartiality, word-of-mouth's fun and receivers'motivation. The communication power of electronic word of mouth includes receivers'using intention and online forwarding that there are different influencing factors because of different receivers'motivation, such as information motivation or entertainment motivation.Fourthly, electronic word of mouth of destination is a common resource; public marketing is the best choice that includes creating strategy, communicating strategy and monitoring strategy, such as forum marketing, blog marketing and SNS marketing and so on. In addition, the marketing of electronic word of mouth must conform to social moral standards.The main contribution of this research is it studies firstly the development and evolvement of electronic word of mouth in mainland china, points out some characteristics of electronic word of mouth about destination and influencing factors of communication power, suggests the model of public marketing strategy, and proposes a marketing view for marketing scholars and tourism managers, this make up the limitations of current research in which the studies about electronic word of mouth on destination are limited and insufficient. Meanwhile, we utilize a plenty of posts on three tourism forums, analyze the characteristics of electronic word of mouth about destination and influencing factors of communication power, and take a large-scale empirical research that make up the shortcoming of current research, in which the simple empirical research is commonly used and ignore qualitative analysis.In a word, the study provides more theoretic contribution of electronic word of mouth. Furthermore, we believe that the empirical research results also has a great realistic meaning in guiding marketing organization of destination and tourism enterprise managers marketing, managing electronic word of mouth, and improving the effect and efficiency of marketing.