| Pub. Date | : Nov, 2020 |
|---|---|
| Product Name | : The IUP Journal of Marketing Management |
| Product Type | : Article |
| Product Code | : IJMM31120 |
| Author Name | : Sabari Shankar R |
| Availability | : YES |
| Subject/Domain | : Marketing |
| Download Format | : PDF Format |
| No. of Pages | : 13 |
Digitalization in tourism industry has led to many advancements for the tourists and destination marketers. This empirical research paper intends to understand the electronic sources of information and the types of information that tourists prefer in their destination choice process, and rank them. Also, the paper intends to understand the relationship between the most preferred two electronic sources and two types of information. Employing convenient sampling technique, a structured questionnaire was floated to 226 tourists with necessary study variables. Simple percentage analysis, cross-tabulation and chi-square of SPSS have been used to achieve the objectives. Social media and search engine have been found as the most preferred electronic sources of information. Electronic word-of-mouth (eWOM) and professional advice have been found as the most preferred type of information. There was no relationship between social media and eWOM and professional advice. Marketing implications have been provided based on the research outcomes.
In marketing literature, information search has been the most investigated perspective in understanding consumer behavior (Hyde, 2008) because it has been considered as the primary step before making purchase (Gursoy and McCleary, 2004). Thus, information search has been evaluated on a critical note in consumer research across diverse products and services. Information and Communications Technology (ICT) has significantly influenced the distinct perspectives of tourism industry (Jacobsen and Munar, 2012). The digital communication channels have overlooked the traditional sources of information (Llodra-Riera et al., 2015). With the penetration of the Internet, perhaps even in the rural economy, the communication of messages and sources to derive the information has become effortless. This inference applies to tourism arena too as the destination marketers mostly rely on inclusion of the Internet as their strategy. For example, social media has become the most powerful tool by which not only tourists, residents, tour operators and destination marketers but also any one can post the information about the destinations and tourism spots (Llodra-Riera et al., 2015). There are distinct sources of information that affect tourists' perception towards the destination