A STUDY ON PROGRESS OF OVERSEAS ONLINE TRAVEL COMMUNITY RESEARCH AND ITS ENLIGHTENMENT
ZHANG Ai-ping1,2, ZHONG Lin-sheng1, XU Yong1
1. Institute of Geographic Sciences and Natural Resources Research, CAS, Beijing 100101, China;
2. University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100049, China
Abstract In recent years, the tourism sector has been experiencing continuous transformation processes caused by the development and acceptance of Information Technologies. With the rapid development of computer network technology and tourism industry, online travel communities continuously appear, and they have increasingly far-reaching influence on the decision-making behavior of tourists, as well as on tourism enterprise marketing. Overseas scholars paid close attention to the influence of online travel community, and have launched a wide range of research and discussion. Based on carding of related literatures in the past 10 years, this paper found that overseas studied on online travel community much earlier, and study perspectives were comparatively broad, theoretical research and method application was more mature. Firstly, most conclusions of existed research were hypothetical, and lack in-depth study or diachronic studies to support these conclusions, thus affecting the formation of core theory system. So far, existed research on online travel community was given priority to case study. Secondly, there still had some problems on specific research and its method, such as insufficient interpretation of mechanism, unreasonable design of structure model, unimproved survey method and fuzzy concept of online travel community. Thirdly, there had a significant contradiction between the regional limitations of most research and the internationalization of online travel community, and research conclusion was hard to provide relevant references for tourism marketing and online travel community's practice. Based on the current research situation abroad, the author argued the influence of online travel community on tourists was direct and superficial, and the profound influence on tourism industry need to be paid more attention.
2013, Vol. 28 
