Tourism 2.0 and Social Media as tools for influencing purchasing decisions

Fundación Hergar (From: 20-03-2014 To: 31-12-2015)

Summary:

Tourism 2.0 represents a new paradigm based on the use of electronic media and social media where the tourist industry must continuously adapt to changing scenarios. The rapid proliferation of web 2.0 and e-commerce has led to a rapid growth of web of opinions or electronic Word of mouth (eWOM) websites, where users can share opinions and preferences on a wide range of products and services. Websites like TripAdvisor, Ciao, Epinions represent nowadays influential channels through which users can learn about the tourist offer and the quality of the offered products. More and more consumers based their purchasing decisions on the previous experiences of other consumers. At the same time, tourist companies can use these reviews to gather users preferences and consequently modify their products or services. However, the information contained in these sites is characterized by being scattered, massive and unstructured, and falls within the field named Big Data. These characteristics make difficult the extraction of relevant information for companies, and they are demanding new methodological techniques for solving these issues.
This project proposes the use of techniques based on Social Network Analysis and Semantic Analysis for the identification of the opinion leaders (also known in the literature as "influencers"), which are those users with a high reputation and whose opinions or reviews exert a great influence on the purchasing decisions of other users. The identification of these users is key to the tourist industry. Not only because it allows companies to concentrate on those really interesting reviews within hundreds or thousands of shared opinions, but because the revisions of these users are addressing the best innovations that could be undertaken within the products and services offered. They are also the target group for possible marketing campaigns.
The proposed methodological techniques include the extraction of massive, scattered and unstructured information to generate social network models and semantic models representing the participation of users and shared content. Statistical algorithms of identification and classification of the influencers and their reviews are also included.
The main outcomes of the project includes a software generated in R for the automated extraction of semantic and social models and their statistical processing to identify opinion leaders. The proposal has a clear multidisciplinary orientation, typical in the field of Big Data, involving areas such as computer science, information systems, statistics and the social sciences.
The target groups affected by the proposal are mainly all tourist companies interested in tracking their brand and products through eWOMs for future enhancements and improvements. It is also directed to those companies who apply viral marketing techniques, as they can make use of opinion leaders to improve the efficiency of the viral processes. Finally, the results of this project have also important implications on the own managers of eWOMs, interested in measuring the reputation of users and the credibility of their opinions.
The proposed methodology is generic and applicable to any organization, product or service. It is important to note that the entire process of extraction of information as well as the generation of social and semantic models will be automated using the software tools developed as part of the project, so companies will not need to devote huge human resources for monitoring information, being only necessary a qualified data analyst.

Publications

Results