• Login
• Admin

li, yuejing (2009) an investigation into the content of travel blogs including the influence of content on browsers' cognitive states: implications for marketing destinations. [Dissertation (University of Nottingham only)] (Unpublished)

PDF - Registered users only - Requires a PDF viewer such as GSview, Xpdf or Adobe Acrobat Reader Download (834kB)

Abstract

Marketers have started to capitalize the internet as a communication mechanism successfully in Business to Business and Business to Consumer strategies. Meanwhile, blogging as one special constituent of the internet has significantly gained attention. In addition, travel and tourism as one of the most popular subjects online, it is likely that they will also be prevalent in the blogosphere. The objectives of this study are to evaluate the destination’s attributes (both positively and negatively) by analyzing the contents of the travel blogs; to identify whether the blogs have a considerable impact on browsers and indirectly promote the destination; and to propose recommendations about the use of blogs as a viable destination marketing tool. It is proper to use qualitative research methods to achieve these objectives.

The investigation results from content analysis and the semantic network analysis conducted by using NVivo 8.0 demonstrate that the bloggers mentioned variable aspects of their visiting experience in the blogs, from the well-known attractions to city transportation. The blog contents even include detailed descriptions of restaurants, pubs, and shopping stores. These results imply blogs could be regarded as a new source of online word-of-mouth that can be referred by the DMOs. An overall impression and the critical attributes of the city are always depicted in the blogs, thus it is could be an opportunity for the DMOs to understand tourists’ changing demands and to improve their destinations by improving their service facilities and the communication strategies. Meanwhile, although the travel blogs talked about New York City from variable aspects, the complaints with regard to the destinations are still relatively less mentioned in the blog contents compared to the positive descriptions.

The Investigation results have considerable implications for the DMOs on improving the destination. The future studies may focus on exploring blogs effect on promoting destinations from the angle of consumer behavior area. We hope that this investigation could stimulate other researchers’ interests in investigating the sociodemographics and the key features of these online bloggers and the comparisons between the opinion seekers and the information recipients are, to our knowledge, another gap need to be investigated.

Item Type:	Dissertation (University of Nottingham only)
Depositing User:	EP, Services
Date Deposited:	05 Mar 2010 14:24
Last Modified:	16 Feb 2018 18:16
URI:	https://eprints.nottingham.ac.uk/id/eprint/22957

Actions (Archive Staff Only)

Edit View