Abstract:
The Internet is already the primary source of tourist destination information
for travelers. According to World Tourism Organization, about 95% of Web
users use the Internet to gather travel related information and about 93%
indicate that they visited tourism Web sites when planning for vacations.
The number of people turning to the Internet for vacation and travel planning
has increased more than 300% over the past five years. E-tourism is a perfect
application area for semantic Web technologies, since information
dissemination and exchange are the key backbones of the travel industry.
The Semantic Web aims at making the wealth of information available on
the Web accessible to more precise search and automated information
extraction and processing, based on a machine-readable representation of
meaning in the form of ontologies. One common assumption is that the
Semantic Web can be made a reality by gradually augmenting existing Web
data by ontological annotations. In this paper, we describe electronic wordof-
mouth (e-WOM), which has been referred to by various terms such as
online communities, feedback systems, peer reputation systems, or consumer
generated media. Such systems provide a global platform for customers to
share their experiences, and also rate service providers. The primary focus
was on the product review systems (PRS). These review systems are less
personal but more ubiquitous platforms for e-WOM wherein consumers post
reviews about the products/services they have consumed. These reviews are
widely accessible to other consumers but are disseminated only when other
consumer consult these reviews during the purchasing process. The results
illustrate, consumers in the low involvement mode, had carefully analyzed
the content of the message to arrive at the decision whether or not to trust the
review. In the high involvement mode, they also gave importance to
peripheral cues such as the demographic information of the reviewer. This
paper shows that the role of social factors, apart from the main review
content, can have significant influence on consumers’ attitude towards the
reviews on the web.
Machine summary:
Keyword: Semantic Web, E-Tourism, Web Services, Ontologies, Electronic Word of Mouth (e-WOM), Product Review Systems (PRS).
There is a variety of services that integrates the information scattered across various sites, federate multiple structured and semi-structured tourism information sources on the web (Haller, Proll, Retschitzegger, Tjoa and Wagner, 2000), and offer search engines for hotel rooms by providing a list of rooms available for a given period at a particular place.
The Semantic Web vision is to extends the current Web with information that provides well-defined meaning, thus enabling computers to return more precise search results, integrate data from different sources, and automate sophisticated tasks (Berners- Lee, Hendler and Lassila, 2001).
Traditionally, word-of-mouth behavior (WOM) has always been considered as an important social process that could determine new product diffusion, customer decision making process, satisfaction and loyalty (Srinivasan, Anderson, and Ponnavolu, 2009).
Therefore, it is hypothesized that both the informational content in the review (ICON) and the social component of the review (IDENTITY) induce consumers' trust in an online review.
Based on the previous discussion, it is hypothesized in this study that the decision trust induced by an online review (TRUST) acts as a mediating construct between the impact of reviewer characteristics on consumer's intention to purchase the product.
The results showed that both the main effects, information content of the review, and the consumers' perceived social identity with the reviewer contribute to an increased trust in the reviews.