A Research On Relationship Value In Virtual Tourism Community

Advances in information and communication technologies have made it possible that virtual communities can be widely used by the public.Virtual tourism communities have developed rapidly when self-service travel becomes popular and tourists rise their personalized demands.For tourists,virtual tourism community is a place where they search for information,share travel experiences,and discuss travel topics.For product providers,it is a marketing channel.As a result,virtual tourism community builds up a connection between consumers and providers.Focusing on virtual tourism communities,this study explores the three variables,interaction among members,sense of virtual community and relationship value,and their connection,which aims to figure out how virtual tourism communities play a role in tourists,enterprises related to tourism and tourism industry.Firstly,this paper reviewed related researches on the theories of virtual tourism community,interaction and relationship value.The model of relationship value in virtual tourism communities were put forward.Meanwhile,variable measurement scales were proposed to test some hypotheses based on the impact paths of “interaction among members-->sense of virtual community-->relationship value”.Then,questionnaires were conducted on members from more than 10 different types of virtual tourism communities,such as Douban Group,Outdoor Alliance,You Xiake,QQ Groups,Baidu Bulletin Board System Related to Travel,Network Forums,Ctrip and Qunar.Finally,descriptive statistical analysis,reliability and validity test,structural equation model test were carried out on the data of 353 valid questionnaires collected from field and online surveys by using SPSS and AMOS softwares,and the following conclusions were drawn:(1)Online interaction has a significant positive impact on offline interaction.Conversely,offline interaction can positively influence online interaction.(2)Online interaction and offline interaction have a significant positive impact on membership,influence and immersion respectively.(3)Membership has a significant positive impact on relationship value,while the impacts of influence and immersion on relationship value are not significant.(4)Online interaction has a significant positive impact on relationship value,while the impact of offline interaction on relationship value is not significant.(5)Membership plays a partial meditating role in the effect of online interaction on relationship value,as well membership plays a full meditating role in the effect of offline interaction on relationship value.Rather than,the mediating effects of influence and immersion on relationship value are not significant.The innovation of this paper is concluded as verifying reciprocal impacts between online and offline interaction in virtual tourism communities and exploring the individual relationship value among members of virtual tourism communities.The following management implications were presented as these aspects: establishing operation rules,implementing differentiated marketing,strengthen the connection between online and offline activities,and encouraging the old members to bring the new and keep in touch.