Understanding Tourism Online Consumer Behavior and eWOM Strategies for Sustainable Business Management

Electronic Word of Mouth (eWOM) has been widely used by the majority of consumers in different digital platforms. This exploratory study was conducted with the aim to get further insights about online consumer behavior through social networking sites and online reviews sites in order to help tourism businesses develop sustainable eWOM strategies. In order to carry out this objective, an exploratory study has been developed to analyze the existing literature of eWOM strategies and online consumer behavior. The systematic literature review analysis establishes two main topics: (i) tourism (ii) eWOM. The scientific database of Web of Science has been used to collect relevant literature of the subject matter. The search term “Tourism” and “eWOM” were applied. The database of Web of Science produced a total of 124 articles and with the different filters applied during the PRISMA 2009 Flow diagram the process resulted in a selection of 13 studies. The results of the research will provide a broader knowledge for scholars of social sciences and businesses for adopting sustainable strategies of the increasing influence of eWOM in tourism.


Introduction
The continuously developing technologies and widespread of Internet have empowered the evolution of traditional word-of-mouth to electronic word-of-mouth, also known as eWOM (Manes and Tchetchik, 2018). Nowadays, consumers use different social platforms, including social networking sites, consumer review sites, blogs, social communities in order to communicate and share their purchase experiences on products and brands with other consumers ( The following tables are retrieved from Cornell Hospitality Report (2010), a study of 2,830 respondents that was conducted with the purpose to explore the influence of both positive and negative information on consumer`s choices of hotels and the way consumers search for hotel information. As presented in Table 1, the majority of the respondents look first for hotel recommendations from friends and family. More than 40 percent seek for travel related websites, meta-search websites, Google, Yahoo and other search engines. Almost 40 percent of female look for hotel reviews on Tripadvisor and social networking sites. Though there is a small difference between men and women, the results generally show that leisure travelers use many sources for hotel information.
According to the research conducted by McCarthy et al (2010), there are several hotel information sources that consumers consult prior to purchase decision. These sources are presented in Table 2. More than 1,600 respondents begin their search for online search engines. Almost one third indicated that they look on online travel agency and brand website. Finally, less than 600 respondents stated to consult other hotel information including Tripadvisor, Facebook and online meta search engines.  Table 3 shows the total visits of consumers on popular websites before booking an accommodation. According to Comscore Score Worldwide Path to Purchase Report (2017), the most visited hotel websites are most popular a week before the hotel transaction when consumers are in the purchase process. Reading online reviews posted by consumers in different eWOM forums has a significant effect on consumer`s buying behavior (Bajpai and Pandey, 2012). Tripadvisor is the world`s largest travel websites and over 57 % of hotel clients visit Tripadvisor before their purchase. A recent research has emphasized its growing importance for consumers related to online reviews in the hospitality industry building competence and commitment of consumers (Manes and Tchetchik, 2018).
The results abovementioned in the different tables were used as the foundations to explore the impact of eWOM strategies on different social platforms and to provide an overview of consumer behavior during the information search phase with a social science approach. Following the lines of this research McCarthy et al. (2010), this study aims to investigate in-depth online consumer behavior in order to help tourism businesses develop sustainable eWOM strategies.
In this research, the concept of sustainability of hotels is understood in a managerial and economic perspective. Sustainable business are companies that have strong foundations that help the adapt to changes in markets and economy (Reyes-Menendez et al. 2018) The structure of the research is divided into sections; methodology explains the process of obtaining the sources and knowledge for conducting and executing the study; exploratory analysis contains the existing literature review, which highlights the interests of researchers in influencing consumer`s decision making and business outcomes. Analysis results reveal the evidences and the impact of eWOM on decision making of travelers in online review sites and social networking sites. Finally, the conclusions provide a further understanding of eWOM strategies in studies of marketing and tourism. At the same time, tourism has experienced continuous growth over the past six decades, becoming one of the largest and fastest-growing economic sectors in the world (UN World Tourism Organization, 2017). UNWTO reported that by 2030, it is expected to reach an increase of 57% representing 1.8 billion international tourist arrivals (UN World Tourism Organization, 2017). Therefore, tourism is considered a continuously developing and highly competitive global industry involving different sectors worldwide.

Literature review
Therefore, online travel sites and social networking sites should be taken into account in order to have wider understanding of the continuously increasing impact of eWOM on different social platforms and its effect on decision making of hotel consumers. (2019), an exploratory study has been developed to analyze the existing literature of eWOM and online consumer behavior for tourism businesses. The systematic literature analysis establishes two main topics: (i) tourism (ii) eWOM.

Following the existing studies of McCarthy et al. (2010) and Reyes-Menendez et al
The scientific database of Scopus, PubMed, PsyINFO, ScienceDirect and Web of Science were used to collect the existing literature of the subject matter. The search term tourism and eWOM were applied. The database of Scopus, PubMed, PsyINFO, ScienceDirect and Web of Science produced a total of 135 articles and with the different filters applied during the PRISMA 2009 Flow diagram the process resulted in a selection of 13 studies. No filtered were used and the Boolean operator AND was applied to optimize the results of the corresponding topic related to this study. All the articles were analyzed by reading the titles and abstracts and finally, selecting the ones which meet the inclusion criteria of this investigation. The data collection was gathered during the month of June 2019.
The authors have analyzed the titles and abstracts of articles to identify the adequateness of the articles to continue with the systematic literature review process. The criteria are based on the AMSTAR tool (AMSTAR, 2017) (see Figure 1) to incorporate only high quality abstracts. Although the AMSTAR tool was initially designed to assess the quality of the articles from their abstracts, we have followed the indications of Bosch and Sang (2017) as an eligibility gauge for this research. The objective is to achieve the highest possible amount of evidence in the results based on quality studies. Some of the variables used in AMSTAR to evaluate the quality of the systematic review were: (i) the relationship of the research question to the criteria included in the study, (ii) the extraction of data from at least two independent researchers (iii) the quality of the literature review, (iii) the identification and definition of concepts, and (iv) the quality of the references used throughout the study.

Exploratory analysis of results
The Systematic Literature Review (SLR) was proposed in the studies of Bassett (2015)   Kini (2015) The particular interest of this study is in existing frameworks and models to study negative eWOM in leading social networks, and its impact on brand, products and services. As observed in the abovementioned cites, the development of the literature demonstrates the increasing interest of numerous researchers related to the concept of eWOM and social networking sites. Over the years, interesting results have been found and explained as follow. Kim et al. (2018) revealed that the homophily and tie strength between a website and a consumer are important drivers of source credibility, which influences attitude toward the reviews as well as the website. The attitude formed through the perceptions of tie-strength, homophily and source credibility determines the influence of eWOM consumers' purchase decisions.

Preprints
Following the studies conducted in 2014, Teng et al. (2017) found out that argument quality, source credibility, source attractiveness, source perception, and source style exerted varying influences on Chinese and Malaysian users' attitudes and intentions to continue their study abroad. Researchers also showed that Ecommerce-eWOM's usefulness and credibility positively influence the adoption of EC-eWOM, but negatively influence that of Social media-eWOM. EC-eWOM adoption negatively impacts SM-eWOM adoption, and mediates the relationship between usefulness, credibility and SM-eWOM adoption (Yan et al., 2016).
Moreover, Ladhari and Michaud (2015) conducted a research of 800 university students and found out the influences of comments generated on Facebook in the users' decision-making process. Luo and Zhong (2015) indicated that travel-related eWOM strategies communication via SNSs relied on existing social relationships, ties of which can be categorized as strong, of middling strength, or weak and the effect of transmitted information was stronger than that of influential decision-making. Kini (2015) studied current research of eWOM, social media and negative eWOM strategies while Manes and Tchetchik (2018) present its importance to reduce the asymmetry of information. Cheung et al. (2014) discovered that consumer purchase decisions are influenced by the two social information cues and that action-based social information is more influential than opinion-based social information. It was also observed that consumer engagement and consumer expertise play an important moderating role in consumer purchase decisions. Munar  Then, in order to deepen the literature review and to unveil the adequate platforms to develop eWOM strategies, we have classified the articles included in the review according to the social platforms they have used in the research. This analysis can be seen in Table 5.  In view of the previous information we can highlight that the previous investigations have focused their analysis of the data in the Social Networks in a generic way. It is what in the previous table we have named SNS and it appears in the last column. This is because the authors in their research have done a survey on the online or eWOM reviews in which they asked about Social Networks in a generic way (SNS) and not in a specific way.
This shows that previous research has focused on the development of studies that make it possible to understand social networks globally. However, each of the social platforms has very specific particularities, a specific tone and once that must be used by tourism businesses to develop specific strategies for each social channel. Being highly recommended also have experts who dominate these social networks and ensure the success of tourism businesses in a sustainable way.An exception to these generic questions is found in the research of Ladhari and Michaud (2015) in which despite having done a survey on eWOM, the questions specifically included information about the Social Network Facebook as can be seen in the previous table.
Another research that also focuses on a single social network is the research of Sotiriadis and Van Zyl (2013) in which the authors take information specifically on reviews or eWOM strategies on the Social Network Twitter.
On the other hand, it should be noted that the Social Tourism Network par excellence, Tripadvisor, has not been used in any of the reflected research. This may be due to the difficulty of obtaining the data from Tripadvisor since it is necessary to develop an algorithm that allows downloading this data, unlike the Social Network Twitter that allows to connect to the API directly and thus obtain reviews or comments from the users Another reason why Tripadvisor has not been used as a source of information or a key part of the research collected is because some researchers do not consider this platform to be a Social Network and therefore would not fall within the possibilities of eWOM strategies on social platforms.
To conclude with the analysis of the different platforms and information sources of the previous investigations on eWOM it is interesting to reflect that one of the columns is the company's own web page. In his investigations, Cheung et al. (2014), Ladhari and Michaud (2015), Kini (2015) and Yan et al. (2016) use the website of companies as a source of information on online reviews.
In order to understand which are the areas of greatest interest to the eWOM strategies from the different scientific publications. With this objective, it is interesting to analyze it through a scientometric analysis. The eWOM has a computer science perspective since it involves the analysis of data from social platforms from a computer science point of view since algorithms are needed to download the data provided by users and therefore are Computer Scientist those who have paid attention to the analysis of the eWOM and have published in Journals included in this category. Another one of the great categories that have analyzed the eWOM is from the point of view of Information Systems since the information coming from the Social Networks forms information systems that are used by part of the tourism professionals. The last of the categories that can be identified after carrying out the scientometric analysis is that of Hospitality, Leisure, Sport & Tourism since eWOM is a particularly relevant topic in the tourism sector because travelers' decision-making is usually supported by the comments contributed by previous visitors. As well as the category of Business & Management since the information obtained in social networks and Internet on the reviews will be used by the management of tourist companies. With respect to the quality of the publications, it can be highlighted that most of the investigations belong to the quartile 1 and the quartile 3. Of all the included investigations, half of them belong to Q1, that is to say that they have the highest possible classification of a Journal (Computers in Human Behavior, International Journal of Hospitality Management, Tourism Management, International Journal of Information Management, Decision Support Systems).

Implications
The findings of the study reveal the importance of eWOM strategies for the hospitality industry not only in major websites but also in other type of forums that require managerial attention for proper brand management as it reduces the asymmetry consumers get about the industry (Manes and Tchetchik, 2018).
The continuously growing sector of tourism has been supported by the development of Information and communication technologies for nearly four decades (Buhalis and Law 2008). As we progress through 21st century, digital revolution in social sciences and tourism must be taken into account, as it is one of the important factors that make the industry globally competitive The popularity of digital online platforms related to online reviews and the increasing influence of eWOM on consumer behavior have driven numerous scholars to explore and to provide a broader knowledge related to this phenomenon of online reviews. Considering that online reviews has become a marketing tool and a success factor of many business models (French et al. 2011), gaining insights of the behavioral factors that influence consumers` purchase decision making through online review sites and social media should be considered prominent (Robinson, Goh and Zhang, 2012).

Conclusions
This exploratory study aimed to get further insights about online consumer behavior through social networking sites and online reviews sites in order to help tourism businesses develop sustainable eWOM strategies. As observed throughout this research, numerous scholars have gained the interest of the concept of eWOM strategies in social networking sites and online review sites. Although many studies have been conducted concerning its impact on hotel industry (Vermeulen et al., 2009;Xie et al., 2011;Mauri et al., 2013) there is still need for further research due to the evolution of the industry and the consumers. The significant relevance of the influences of eWOM strategies for social sciences and the tourism industry have been acknowledge over the years and filling this gap should be taken into consideration in order to develop the existing literature of tourism and marketing.
Taking into account that tourists now live in the information era, analyzing the flows of information and identifying that information asymmetry might happen because of tourism social networks is one important aspect to be considered (Manes and Tchetchik, 2018).
Moreover, following the lines of this research will help the businesses and companies of tourism industry to adapt strategies along with the innovation of information technologies. Adapting to the continuously changing behavior of consumers within the online tourism context should be considered as opportunity rather than a challenge. Understanding the current tourist is essential and exploring how to influence and reach those tourists in coming years will crucially impact the sustainable development of business within the hospitality and tourism sector (Moutinho et al., 2011).
Therefore, market research, analyzing online consumer behavior and taking the opportunity of the possible influence of purchase decision making are crucial. For the future research, we propose to continue the exploratory study with quantitative techniques which allow measuring the impact of online review sites and social networking sites on consumers` decision making related to hotel choices.