|
|
|
| THE INFLUENCE OF ONLINE INFORMATION SEARCH ON TOURISTS' PERCEIVED IMAGE AND DECISION MAKING |
| LV Xing-yang1, LIU Li-juan2, LIN Shuang3 |
1. School of Business Administration, Southwestern University of Finance and Economics, Chengdu 611130, China;
2. School of Management, Inner Mongolia University of Technology, Hohhot 010051, China;
3. Economics and Management School of Wuhan University, Wuhan 430072, China |
|
|
|
|
Abstract The external information search will change tourists' perceived image of destinations, and ultimately affect tourists' destination choice decisions. In the Internet era, tourists depend more on the online information search, and tend to use a lot of non-DMO-controlled information sources to obtain information, which makes the decision-making process more complicated. Based on the theory of destination image, this study simulates self-service tourists' whole process of searching for information through the network, choosing destinations and making travel plans before traveling by the context experiment approach. The cognitive changes of tourists' destination image before and after the experiment are measured by the questionnaire and word frequency analysis. Then participants' eyetracking information is traced by the isotope tracer technique, and the study analyses the information absorbing process to arrive at the causes of cognitive changes. Next, the in-depth interview approach is used to investigate the internal reasons why participants choose or give up a destination when they make a decision. Besides, visualizing the whole trial process of participants' behaviors by protocol analysis, the study clearly portrays the internal mechanism of "funnel process" which explains progressive screening procedure from the area of consciousness to the consideration set and then to the final decision in the traditional destination decision model. Finally, the study systematically analyzes the influence of potential tourists' online information search behaviors on their perceived image formation and destination choice decisions.
|
|
Received: 28 July 2014
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
2015, Vol. 30 
