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E-WOM and Accommodation: An Analysis of the Factors That Influence Travelers' Adoption of Information
from Online Reviews
Raffaele Filieri and Fraser McLeay
Journal of Travel Research published online 25 March 2013
DOI: 10.1177/0047287513481274

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Journal of Travel Research

E-WOM and Accommodation: An

XX(X) 1­–14
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DOI: 10.1177/0047287513481274

Travelers’ Adoption of Information from jtr.sagepub.com

Online Reviews

Raffaele Filieri1 and Fraser McLeay1

Abstract
Online reviews (ORs) are continuing to foster a renewed spread of word-of-mouth in the travel industry. Travelers
are increasingly using ORs to inform them about accommodations and other tourism-related products. As such, it is
important to improve our understanding of the behavioral consequences of e-word-of-mouth. In this article, we adopt the
elaboration likelihood model to identify what influences travelers to adopt information from ORs in their decision making.
We measure the influence of six dimensions of information quality that are part of the central route and two dimensions
that are associated with the peripheral route of persuasion. The results of this study reveal that product ranking, information
accuracy, information value-added, information relevance, and information timeliness are strong predictors of travelers’
adoption of information from ORs on accommodations. These results imply that high-involvement travelers adopt both
central (information quality) and peripheral (product ranking) routes when they process information from ORs.

Keywords
e-word-of-mouth, online reviews, elaboration likelihood model, information quality dimensions, information quantity,
products ranking

Introduction including accommodation, restaurants, destinations, and

Blogs, online reviews, and social networking websites are
enabling customers to interact virtually and to share informa-
tion, opinions, and knowledge about all kinds of goods, ser-
vices, and brands. Web 2.0 applications are empowering
online user interaction and collaboration and influencing
how travelers create, exchange, and use information
(O’Connor 2008; Sigala, Christou, and Gretzel 2012). Some
of these applications are fostering the spread of word-of-
mouth (WOM) on the web, namely e-WOM (Bronner and de
Hoog 2011). E-WOM has been defined as “any positive or
negative statement made by potential, actual or former cus-
tomers about a product or company, that is made available to
a multitude of people and institutions via the internet”
(Hennig-Thurau et al. 2004, p. 39).
In the travel industry, online reviews (ORs) can be con-
sidered as electronic versions of traditional WOM and con-
sist of comments published by travelers on the tourism
products, services, and brands they experience. Travelers
write ORs to share their own experiences with a product and/
or service and describe their levels of satisfaction to help
other travelers (Yoo and Gretzel 2008). Internet consumer
opinion portals (COPs; Burton and Khammash 2010) are
enabling travelers to review any aspect of a vacation,
other tourism-related products such as tour operators. As
soon as ORs are published on COPs, they are available for
other potential travelers to read and use to inform subsequent
decisions (Sigala, Christou, and Gretzel 2012). The impor-
tance of ORs is also growing among e-travel agencies that
are providing their sponsored products with customer
reviews (e.g., venere.com, e-booking.com, expedia.com,
hotels.com) or are encouraging travelers to post product
reviews on their websites (Mayzlin 2006). In this article, we
focus on the influence that online reviews on accommoda-
tions have on travelers’ adoption of information from ORs.
Information adoption has been defined as the extent to which
consumers modify their behavior by utilizing the suggestions
made in ORs (Sussman and Siegal 2003; Cheung, Lee, and
Rabjhon 2008; Wu and Shaffer 1987). For example, after
reading an OR, a traveler may choose to adopt the informa-
tion received from ORs in their decision-making process and
1
Northumbria University, Newcastle upon Tyne, United Kingdom
Corresponding Author:
Raffaele Filieri, Newcastle Business School, Northumbria University, City
Campus East 1, Newcastle upon Tyne NE1 8ST, United Kingdom
Email: raffaele.filieri@northumbria.ac.uk

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2 Journal of Travel Research XX(X)
book a particular hotel or select to stay at another more suit-
able location.
The use of ORs is growing rapidly. For example,
Tripadvisor (www.tripadvisor.com), one of the most suc-
cessful COPs which specializes in travel, enables travelers to
write reviews on accommodations all around the world and
brings together individuals in discussion forums (Buhalis
and Law 2008). Between 2010 and 2013, traffic on
Tripadvisor increased from 20 to 60 million monthly visi-
tors, with registered members rising from 15 to 20 million
(www.tripadvisor.com 2010, 2013). Tripadvisor has been
criticized in the press as consumers could potentially be
fooled by fraudulent posts (Morris 2012); however, the
growth of this and similar COPs on travel services suggests
that e-WOM will continue to play an ever more vital role in
travelers’ purchasing decisions.
With such growth, e-WOM and ORs are becoming an
increasingly important focus of research in marketing,
e-commerce, and e-tourism studies. The popularity of
e-WOM among practitioners has spurred a number of
research streams. Scholars have measured the influence of
ORs on sales of movies, books, and games (Godes and
Mayzlin 2004; Liu 2006; Duan, Bin, and Whinston 2005;
Chevalier and Mayzlin 2006; Dellarocas, Zhang, and Awad
2007; Zhu and Zhang 2010), as well as investigated the influ-
ence that ORs play on consumer behavior (Hennig-Thurau
and Walsh 2003; Senecal and Nantel 2004; Smith, Menon,
and Sivakumar 2005; Cheung, Lee, and Rabjhon 2008; Sher
and Lee 2009). Researchers in the travel and tourism indus-
try have found that ORs affect hotel rooms sales (Ye, Law,
and Bin 2009; Vermeulen and Seegers 2009; Ye et al. 2011),
and suggested that ORs have higher levels of credibility
than other sources of information (Gretzel and Yoo 2008;
Akehurst 2009; Dickinger 2011; Fotis, Buhalis, and Rossides
2012). Research has also revealed that positive reviews
improve attitudes toward hotels (Vermeulen and Seegers
2009) as well increase travelers’ confidence and reduce
their risk when booking accommodation (Gretzel, Yoo, and
Purifoy 2007).
The relationship between communication routes and cus-
tomer involvement and the role that destination websites can
play in persuading a customer to visit a particular destination
have been explored by Tang, Jang, and Morrison (2012).
Other studies have analyzed travelers’ motivations to post
reviews (Bronner and de Hoog 2011), and investigated
e-ratings and e-complaints behavior regarding hotel services
(Del Chiappa and Dall’Aglio 2012). Some researchers have
explored the perceived trustworthiness of online reviews
channels (Yoo et al. 2009; Dickinger 2011) while others
have illustrated how travel blog narratives can be used to
identify the factors that drive customer delight at tourism
venues (Magnini, Crotts, and Zehrer 2011). However, there
is a need for more research that explores the behavioral
implications of e-WOM on travelers (Litvin, Goldsmith, and
Pan 2008; Vermeulen and Seegers 2009).
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Our research aims to investigate the factors that influence
the adoption of information from ORs by using Petty and
Cacioppo’s (1986) elaboration likelihood model (ELM),
which is widely used in the general e-WOM literature (Chan
and Ngai 2011). An increased knowledge of the informa-
tional influence of ORs on the traveler decision-making pro-
cess may help tourism marketers to understand the way
different information dimensions in ORs will impact travel-
ers’ decisions when booking an accommodation.
In this paper, we build on existing literature and contrib-
ute to theory in a number of ways. Many existing studies are
based on manipulated experiments, and focus on the influ-
ence of either positive or negative reviews on purchase inten-
tions (Park, Lee, and Han 2007; Park and Lee 2008; Gauri,
Bhatnagar, and Rao 2008; Vermeulen and Seegers 2009; Lee
and Lee 2009; Gupta and Harris 2010). Other researchers
who have focused on travel blogs or online diaries that are a
form of e-WOM have mainly utilized content analysis or
narrative analysis (Banyai and Glover 2012). Instead, we
conduct a large-scale survey to explore the determinants of
information adoption. Moreover, in this study, we introduce
the concept of overall product ranking, which is a type of
categorical information relating to the overall evaluation of
accommodations provided by travelers, which summarizes
the proportion of positive, neutral, and negative reviews for
a product (e.g., accommodation) in a category (e.g., destina-
tion). In addition, we investigate the influence that different
information quality dimensions have on travelers’ informa-
tion adoption. Although the ELM has been utilized to better
understand the communication route of destination websites
(Tang, Jang, and Morrison 2012), to our knowledge, this is
the only study which has drawn upon ELM theory to explore
the factors that influence travelers’ adoption of information
from ORs.
Conceptual Model
Information Adoption and
the Elaboration Likelihood Model
In our paper, we draw on Sussman and Siegal’s (2003) infor-
mation adoption model (IAM), which was developed from the
Theory of Reasoned Action (TRA; Fishbein and Ajzen 1975;
Ajzen and Fishbein 1980) and its derivative, the Technology
Acceptance Model (TAM; Davis 1989). The TRA/TAM
assumes that people form intentions to adopt a technology or a
behavior based on what they believe about the consequences
of adoption and their evaluation of the consequences. The
IAM was originally constructed in an effort to better under-
stand how people form intentions toward adopting knowledge
on particular advocated ideas, behavior, or technology
(Sussman and Siegal 2003). However, it can also be used to
investigate the adoption of advice (Sussman and Siegal 2003)
such as the information contained in ORs (Cheung, Lee, and
Rabjhon 2008). In a similar way to Sussman and Siegal (2003),
Filieri and McLeay 3
we integrate IAM with ELM but instead of focusing on knowl-
edge transfer within an organization, we explore travelers’
adoption of information from ORs.
A fundamental principle of the ELM model is an “elabo-
ration continuum,” which ranges from low elaboration (low
thought) to high elaboration (high thought). Along this con-
tinuum, the ELM distinguishes between two routes that
influence consumers’ attitude change: a “central route” and
a “peripheral route” (Petty, Cacioppo, and Schumann
1983). People who are motivated or willing to process
information take the central route, spending more time and
providing a rational response using criteria such as infor-
mation quality (Petty, Cacioppo, and Schumann 1983). On
the contrary, people who are less motivated or not willing
or able to process information take a peripheral route and
use information short cuts, such as source credibility or vol-
ume of information to make a decision (Petty, Cacioppo,
and Schumann 1983).
The ELM is one of the most frequently used theoretical
frameworks in studies on e-WOM (Chan and Ngai 2011) and
has been utilized to explain the persuasive power of e-WOM
among consumers with different levels of purchasing
involvement (Park and Lee 2008; Lee, Park, and Han 2008;
Sher and Lee 2009; Gupta and Harris 2010). Drawing on the
IAM and ELM, in this study we argue that travelers who
adopt information from ORs will incorporate the information
obtained into their mental models. They will subsequently
take action following the advice or recommendations
received from ORs.
The purchase of accommodation is usually considered a
complex decision that requires an extensive informational
search because of high levels of perceived risk and the fact
that it is intangible at the time of purchase (Sirakaya and
Woodside 2005; Major and McLeay 2013). Few researchers
have investigated the antecedents of consumers’ adoption of
information from ORs (Cheung, Lee, and Rabjhon 2008) and
none of these have explored the adoption of information
from ORs on accommodations. Cheung, Lee, and Rabjhon’s
(2008) study on a Chinese food and restaurant virtual com-
munity found that information usefulness is one of the stron-
gest antecedents of ORs’ adoption. A similar result was
obtained by Sussman and Siegal (2003) in their study on how
an individual’s behavior is affected by suggestions and rec-
ommendations they received via e-mail in an organizational
context.
Both the influence of the central and peripheral routes on
travelers’ adoption of information from ORs on accommoda-
tions will be investigated in this study. Below we describe
each in turn.
Central Route
The ELM theory suggests that consumers who are highly
involved with a product or service are more likely to use a
central route for information processing, focusing on the
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quality of arguments (Petty, Cacioppo, and Schumann
1983). The quality of arguments contained within a com-
munication message will determine the degree of informa-
tional influence under conditions of high elaboration
likelihood (Petty and Cacioppo 1986). Previous research on
e-WOM has investigated information quality as a predictor
of consumer purchase intentions in high-involvement situ-
ations (Park, Lee, and Han 2007; Park and Lee 2008).
However, these studies analyzed information quality as a
composite construct, failing to discern the importance of
different information quality dimensions on consumers’
information adoption in e-WOM. Thus, information com-
pleteness, timeliness, accuracy, relevancy, understandabil-
ity, and value addition (Wang and Strong 1996) are
informational quality dimensions that will be further
explored in this study.
Peripheral Route
The ELM theory suggests that individuals take a peripheral
route when they are less motivated or less capable of thinking
about a message, or when they purchase low-involvement
products or services (Petty and Cacioppo 1986). Consumers,
therefore, make less cognitive efforts and use peripheral cues
to evaluate a message. Peripheral cues are simple rules or
information short cuts such as brand image and source attrac-
tiveness that consumers use to assess a recommendation
rather than evaluating the quality of the arguments used by a
source (Petty and Cacioppo 1986). Previous studies have
adopted information quantity (number of reviews) as a
peripheral cue to information processing in e-WOM (Park,
Lee, and Han 2007; Park and Kim 2008; Gupta and Harris
2010), and found that consumers associate the number of
ORs with a product’s popularity (Chevalier and Mayzlin
2006). In addition, in this study we introduce the concept of
overall product ranking.
The overall ranking of products in a specific category
(e.g., accommodations in a specific destination) is a com-
mon feature in COPs. Overall product ranking refers to an
overall score that is often graphically displayed as a number
of stars that represents the average rating provided by all
customers who have reviewed a product. The overall rank-
ing of accommodation summarizes the relative proportion
of positive, negative, and neutral reviews. In a low elabora-
tion situation, consumers may use information quantity (the
number of reviews per product) and overall product ranking
instead of reading the full content of ORs. Both of these fac-
tors are incorporated into our conceptual model. In sum-
mary, our conceptual model, which is illustrated in Figure 1,
includes elements of both the central (six information qual-
ity dimensions) and the peripheral (information quantity and
product ranking) routes to persuasion. The inclusion of
these variables will improve researchers’ understanding
of the informational influence of ORs on travelers’ decisions
to adopt information from ORs.
4 Journal of Travel Research XX(X)

Hypothesis 1: There is a positive relationship between

information timeliness and travelers’ adoption of infor-
CENTRAL ROUTE mation from ORs.
Information
Timeliness
Information understandability refers to readability, inter-
pretability, and ease of understanding, as well as language,
H-1
Information semantic, and lexical expressions used by reviewers (Wang
Understandability and Strong 1996). ORs are easy to read and understand if the
H-2 information presented in them is judged as clear, logical, and
Information interpretable. On the contrary, the use of technical words,
Relevance
H-3 dialect, or jargon might undermine a review’s clarity. Thus,
ORs may be difficult to understand because of a reviewer’s
Information Accuracy H-4 poor writing skills, or the different language and jargon used.
Thus, the clarity and readability of reviews may influence
Value-Added
H-5 Information Adoption
travelers’ adoption of information from ORs. Therefore:
Information

Information H-6 Hypothesis 2: There is a positive relationship between

Completeness
H-7
PERIPHERAL
ROUTE
H-8
Information Quantity
Product Ranking
Figure 1.  Research model.
Hypotheses Development
ELM theory suggests that in a high-elaboration context, con-
sumers may consider information quality as a central cue to
information processing. Instead, in a low-elaboration situa-
tion, consumers may use peripheral cues like overall product
ranking and information quantity for adopting information
and making a decision without fully reading ORs. In the fol-
lowing paragraphs, we describe these information-processing
cues and the hypotheses we test in this study.
Central Route Factors
Information timeliness refers to information that is up to
date, current, and represents the state of the art of a product/
service (Nelson, Todd, and Wixom 2005). In comparison to
traditional WOM, ORs are available 24 hours a day. The
most recent ORs are displayed first on COPs, so consumers
can easily access the latest reviews published on specific
accommodations. This means that travelers can obtain fresh
and current reviews on accommodation which distinguishes
ORs from printed travel guides, which need more time to be
updated and distributed to travelers. Information currency
may increase the likelihood that travelers will adopt informa-
tion from ORs in their decision making process. Thus:
perceived information understandability and travelers’
adoption of information from ORs.
Information relevance refers to the extent to which a review
is applicable and helpful for a task at hand and depends on dif-
ferent customer needs in specific situations (Wang and Strong
1996). ORs are relevant if they provide the kind of information
a customer is looking for. For example, tourists on a honey-
moon may be more interested in searching for information
about romantic accommodations situated in a scenic and quiet
area, possibly close to the main attractions. This target group
will generally want to avoid basic, cheap, and less comfortable
accommodations, which may be preferred by other market
segments such as backpackers. Therefore, the capacity of ORs
to satisfy travelers’ needs might affect the decision to adopt
information from ORs in their decision making. Thus:
Hypothesis 3: There is a positive relationship between
information relevance and travelers’ adoption of infor-
mation from Ors.
Information accuracy is defined as the correctness in the
mapping of stored information to the appropriate state in the real
world that the information represents (Nelson, Todd, and
Wixom 2005). The accuracy of information depends on travel-
ers’ perceptions that information is accurate, correct, believable,
and credible (Wang and Strong 1996). Because comments in
ORs are made by independent reviewers, travelers may perceive
ORs as correct, candid, and free from bias comments. As ORs
are comments provided by travelers for other travelers, they may
be perceived as more trustworthy and accurate than other infor-
mation sources, such as marketing communications (Bickart
and Schindler 2001; Senecal and Nantel 2004; Smith, Menon,
and Sivakumar 2005; Dickinger 2011). Such evaluations may
also be influenced by a traveler’s previous experience with ORs.
Therefore, we argue that an increase in the perceived accuracy
of the information provided in ORs will lead to an increase in the
likelihood of travelers adopting information from ORs. Thus:

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Filieri and McLeay 5
Hypothesis 4: There is a positive relationship between the
perceived accuracy of information and travelers’ adop-
tion of information from ORs.
Value-added information is the extent to which informa-
tion is beneficial and provides advantages from their use
(Wang and Strong 1996). ORs may empower a traveler’s
capacity to make informed decisions by providing informa-
tion that is generally not easy to access through traditional
marketing communications. Marketing communications are
generally aimed at emphasizing the positive sides of a prod-
uct or service while trying to hide or to shadow the negative
aspects. However, online reviewers describe both the posi-
tive and the negative aspects of accommodations. This
enables travelers to get a more comprehensive and critical
description of accommodations by facilitating the under-
standing of their relative strengths and weaknesses. Thus, by
reading ORs, travelers may discover aspects that were not
considered before (e.g., the presence of loud night clubs in a
hotel’s surroundings). Travelers may adopt information from
ORs because they are beneficial and advantageous for their
decision-making process. Thus:
Hypothesis 5: There is a positive relationship between
value-added information and travelers’ adoption of
information from ORs.
Information completeness is defined as the extent to
which information is of sufficient breadth, depth, and scope
for the task at hand (Wang and Strong 1996). Accordingly, a
customer may judge a review as complete based on the
degree to which information from ORs is comprehensive and
exhaustive for booking accommodation. This means that
ORs will discuss the main aspects of a room or hotel, such as
its location, cleanliness, price of rooms, quality and assort-
ment of breakfast, friendliness of staff, and the like. In offline
WOM, the breadth and depth of information available
through social networks is limited; thus, peers and friends
may have only a limited knowledge on some aspects of
accommodations in a destination. On the contrary, in e-WOM
travelers can retrieve information about all the services avail-
able in the different accommodations (e.g., mini-bar prices,
breakfast quality, state of furniture, friendliness of staff),
which can facilitate their decision making process. Therefore,
the more exhaustive or complete information in ORs is the
higher will be the likelihood that travelers will adopt infor-
mation from ORs. Thus:
Hypothesis 6: There is a positive relationship between
information completeness and travelers’ information
adoption from ORs.
Peripheral Route Factors
Information quantity is the extent to which the quantity or
volume of available data is appropriate for a specific task
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(Wang and Strong 1996). Information quantity represents the
number of ORs per accommodation; it is a peripheral cue to
information processing since it is a short cut that consumers
may use to make a decision (Park, Lee, and Han 2007). The
amount of ORs per product is considered an indicator of
product popularity and of the market performance of books
(Chevalier and Mayzlin 2006). Travelers may tend to believe
that accommodations with a large number of reviews are
more popular and more frequently booked than others with
fewer reviews.
Research in e-WOM has found contrasting results regard-
ing the influence of the number of reviews on consumers’
purchasing intentions. Some scholars conclude that informa-
tion quantity influences the adoption of information from
ORs by unskeptical consumers (Sher and Lee 2009) and
among low-involved consumers (Park, Lee, and Han 2007).
Others have determined that the quantity of ORs has an
impact on sales of books, games, and movies (Chevalier and
Mayzlin 2006; Dellarocas, Zhang, and Awad 2007; Liu
2006; Duan, Bin, and Whinston 2005; Zhu and Zhang 2010).
In contrast, Gauri, Bhatnagar, and Rao (2008) collected data
from BizRate.com, an online price comparison web site, and
found that it is the percentage of positive reviews rather than
the total number of reviews that influences the likelihood of
repurchase. Davis and Khazanchi (2008) conclude that it is
not simply the number of reviews that affects sales but also
the efficacy of promotion, the type of product, and the fre-
quency of visualization on other e-commerce websites.
However, in this study we hypothesize that a high number of
reviews will increase a traveler’s perceptions of the popular-
ity of accommodations and increase the likelihood of the
adoption of information from ORs. Thus:
Hypothesis 7: There is a positive relationship between
information quantity and travelers’ information adop-
tion from ORs.
Product Ranking refers to a typology of categorical or
numerical information based on travelers’ overall (average)
evaluation of accommodations in a destination. Rankings
and ratings of a product are a typical feature of e-WOM
because in WOM it is often difficult to sort out all of the
opinions of reviewers and obtain a correct, unbiased sum-
mary of product evaluations. Different COPs adopt different
scales for building rankings which are graphically illustrated
using a number of stars. For example, Tripadvisor.com
adopts a five-point scale from 1 (terrible) to 5 (excellent) to
rate accommodations. On Booking.com, travelers can adopt
a scale from 1 to 10 (terrible to superb). The ranking or num-
bers of stars represents the average customer’s evaluation of
accommodation and summarizes the proportion of positive,
neutral, and negative reviews. We argue that product ranking
provides a short cut in the information elaboration process,
since it restricts the number of alternatives available by dis-
playing accommodations according to traveler average eval-
uations, from the best to the worst. Thus, travelers may not
6 Journal of Travel Research XX(X)

need to scroll down the entire list or to check all the alterna- Table 1.  Sociodemographic Characteristics of the Respondents.
tive accommodations available and to read all ORs. By
Sociodemographic Characteristics of the Respondents
restricting the alternatives available to travelers, the overall
ranking of accommodations in a destination might enable the Dimension Items Frequency Percentage
adoption of information from ORs. Current e-WOM litera- Gender Female 316 55
ture has not investigated product ranking as an antecedent of   Male 262 45
travelers’ adoption of information from ORs. The majority Age 18-25 80 13.8
of studies have investigated the influence played by either   26-35 466 80.6
positive or negative reviews (Park, Lee, and Han 2007; Park   36-45 24 4.2
and Lee 2008; Gauri, Bhatnagar, and Rao 2008; Vermeulen   46-54 8 1.4
and Seegers 2009; Lee and Lee 2009; Gupta and Harris   >55 0 0
2010). However, in a real scenario travelers do not read only Education Primary school 8 1.4
positive or negative reviews; rather they may use summary   High School 80 13.8
statistics like rankings to understand the proportion of nega-   Undergraduate 240 41.6
tive and positive reviews for a specific accommodation.   Postgraduate 250 43.2
Therefore, in this research we argue that overall product Economic Status (€) 70,000 and above 0 0
ranking may influence travelers’ adoption of information   50,000-69,000 82 14.2
from ORs. Thus:   30,000-49,000 101 17.5
  10,000-29,000 245 42.4
Hypothesis 8: There is a positive relationship between   Under 9,999 142 24.5
product ranking and travelers’ information adoption   No answer 8 1.4
from ORs. Nationality European 490 84.8
  African 48 8.3
  Middle-Eastern 40 6.9
Method
Data Collection
An online questionnaire was created using professional
Construct Measures
survey-design software and a link to the questionnaire was The items used to measure the constructs explored in this
sent to the study sample by email. The questionnaire was study are displayed in Table 1. Most of these items have
primarily composed of closed-ended questions measured already been used in previous e-commerce, information sys-
using a 7-point Likert-type scale and was pilot-tested with 30 tems, and e-WOM research (Wixom and Todd 2005; Park,
users of ORs. The sample was selected along purposive lines Lee, and Han 2007; Cheung, Lee, and Rabjhon 2008). A
with a focus on identifying travelers who had recently read scale for measuring product rankings was developed for this
ORs when searching for information on accommodations study using the procedure recommended by Gerbing and
while planning their holidays. Anderson (1988). The dependent variable was travelers’
An email was then sent to a convenience sample of aca- adoption of information from ORs, which was measured by
demic and administrative staff from three Italian universities. two items derived from Wu and Shaffer (1987), and recently
A snowball sampling method was then used to expand the adopted by Cheung, Lee, and Rabjhon (2008) in e-WOM
sample and generate additional contacts from nonacademic research. Involvement with message processing was mea-
users. The questionnaire was initially distributed by email to sured using a scale that was developed and tested by Wheeler,
a convenience sample of 55 workers and part-time students Petty, and Bizer (2005). For the sake of simplicity, only three
with occupations in a variety of industries. This method is items were used.
appropriate for this study since readers of ORs on accom-
modations may represent a small percentage of the overall
population and therefore might be difficult to identify or to
Sample Profile
contact. The questionnaire was available in English and in The sociodemographic characteristics of the sample are pre-
Italian as the research was based in Italy. Questionnaires sented in Table 2. The majority of respondents were between
were translated from English into Italian by an Italian native 26 and 35 years old (80.6% of respondents), or less than 25
speaker. A second Italian native speaker translated back the years old (13.8%). The disproportionate predominance of
Italian version into English. A total number of 578 respon- this age cohort may represent a limitation of the study.
dents completed the survey. Of these, 13 were excluded from However, this age cohort represents the typical age of many
subsequent analysis because respondents did not complete users of ORs and other social media and is also known as
all of the questions or because answers were not consistent or the generation Y cohort (Blackshaw and Nazzaro 2006). The
accurate. level of education of the sample was high, with 43.2% of the

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Filieri and McLeay 7

Table 2.  Constructs and Items.

Dimension Items
Information relevance (Wixom and The information I get through online reviews is relevant as it matches my needs.
Todd 2005) The information I get through online reviews is appropriate for satisfying my needs.
Information understandability (Wang The information I obtain from online reviews is easy to understand.
and Strong 1996) The information I obtain from online reviews is easy to interpret.
The information I obtain from online reviews is easy to read.
Information accuracy (Wixom and The information I obtain from online reviews is correct.
Todd 2005) The information I obtain from online reviews is accurate.
The information I obtain from online reviews is reliable.
Information completeness (Wang and The information I obtain from online reviews is of sufficient depth.
Strong 1996) The information I obtain from online reviews is of sufficient breadth.
Information value-added (Wang and The information I obtain from online reviews enables me to understand both the positive and
Strong 1996) the negative aspects of specific accommodation.
The information I obtain from online reviews enables me to detect unknown aspects of specific
accommodation (related to specific situation or uses).
Information timeliness (Wixom and I adopt current comments in online reviews.
Todd 2005) I adopt timely online reviews.
I adopt up-to-date online reviews.
Information quantity (Park et al. 2007) I adopt online reviews when the number of reviews per accommodation is large.
I adopt online reviews when the quantity of reviews per accommodation information is large.
Product ranking (original scale) The (overall) ranking of different accommodations facilitates the evaluation of the alternatives
available.
(Overall product) rankings help me to rapidly select the best accommodation among several
alternatives.
Involvement (Wheeler, Petty, and Bizer How much effort did you put into evaluating the given information?
2005) Did you think deeply about the information contained in the message?
Information adoption How personally involved did you feel with the issue you read about?
(Cheung, Lee, and Rabjhon 2008; Wu I closely followed the suggestions in online reviews and went to the recommended
and Shaffer 1987) accommodation.
To what extent does the information in the OR motivate you to purchase the recommended
accommodation?

respondents possessing a postgraduate diploma and 41.6%
possessing or pursuing an undergraduate degree. The dispro-
portionate predominance of highly educated respondents
must be considered a limitation of this study.
The majority of our sample was composed of individuals
from European countries, primarily from Italy, which is
acknowledged as a limitation of the study. This sample com-
position is a response to the need to widen the geographic
and cultural scope of e-WOM research, as most existing
studies have been conducted in the United States and in
Asian countries (Chan and Ngai 2011).
Data Analysis
The most fundamental assumption in multivariate data anal-
ysis is the normality of the data (Hair et al. 2010). We used
the skewness value to test normality. None of the variables
considered in the study ever exceed ±2.58 or ±1.96; thus, the
distribution is normal.
Reliability as well as the convergent and discriminant
validity of the model was assessed. Reliability was assessed
for each construct using Cronbach’s α, which is the most
widely used measure of reliability among researchers
(Nunnally 1978). Values can range between 0 and 1, with
higher values indicating higher reliability among the indica-
tors. Nunnally (1978) suggests that a value of 0.70 indicates
good item reliability. Cronbach’s alpha values for the items
of the present study were between 0.788 (involvement) and
0.861 (information adoption) (see Table 3). All items had an
overall Cronbach’s alpha value of 0.826, which confirms
that the model is reliable.
The convergent validity was assessed using the average
variance extracted (AVE) (Fornell and Larcker 1981). As
illustrated in Table 4 all AVE scores exceeded the threshold
of 0.6 and of 0.5; thus, indicating a strong internal reliability
and implying convergent validity (Fornell and Larcker
1981). Evidence of discriminant validity is provided in the
lower matrix of squared correlation coefficients and AVE
scores as shown in Table 4, where the AVE values for any
two constructs were always greater than the squared correla-
tion estimate between any two factors, suggesting discrimi-
nant validity (Fornell and Larcker 1981).
The variance inflation factor (VIF) method was adopted
to assess multicollinearity. All of the regression coefficients

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8 Journal of Travel Research XX(X)

Table 3.  Factor Loadings and Cronbach’s Alpha.

Construct Items Factor Loadings

Product ranking The ranking of different accommodations facilitate the evaluation of the alternatives .77
α = .833 available.
(Overall product) rankings help me to rapidly select the best accommodation among .74
several alternatives.
Information quantity I adopt online reviews when the number of reviews per accommodation is large. .67
α = .798 I adopt online reviews when the quantity of reviews per accommodation information is .69
large.
Information relevance The information I get through online reviews is relevant as it matches my needs. .78
α = .837 The information I get through online reviews is appropriate for satisfying my needs. .80
Information value-added The information I obtain from online reviews enables me to understand both the positive .86
α = .789 and the negative aspects of specific accommodation.
The information I obtain from online reviews enables me to detect unknown aspects of .77
specific accommodation (related to specific situation or uses).
Information The information I obtain from online reviews is easy to understand. .86
understandability The information I obtain from online reviews is easy to interpret. .74
α = .839 The information I obtain from online reviews is easy to read. .68
Information timeliness I adopt current comments in online reviews. .74
α = .844 I adopt timely online reviews. .78
I adopt up-to-date online reviews. .80
Information accuracy The information I obtain from online reviews is correct. .82
α = .836 The information I obtain from online reviews is accurate. .71
The information I obtain from online reviews is reliable. .87
Information completeness The information I obtain from online reviews is of sufficient depth. .67
α = .835 The information I obtain from online reviews is of sufficient breadth. .71
Involvement How much effort did you put into evaluating the given information? .77
α = .788 Did you think deeply about the information contained in the message? .67
How personally involved did you feel with the issue you read about? .75
Information Adoption I closely followed the suggestions in online reviews and went to the recommended .65
α =.861 accommodation.
To what extent does the information in online reviews motivate you to purchase the .77
recommended accommodation?

Table 4.  Items, Mean, Standard deviation, Skewness and Kurtosis, AVE, and Correlation Matrix.

Items M SD Skew Kurtosis 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9

1.  Product ranking 2.6 1.56 0.502 0.410 0.86  
2.  Info accuracy 2.9 0.824 0.006 0.176 .233 0.85  
3.  Info quantity 3.8 1.31 0.472 –0.958 .094 .098 0.63  
4.  Info relevance 2 0.819 0.218 –1.121 .215 .386 .228 0.83  
5.  Info value added 2.5 1.20 1.258 1.203 .203 .268 .379 .408 0.71  
6.  Info understanding 2.7 0.922 1.481 3.209 .257 .193 .068 .298 .378 0.69  
7.  Info timeliness 3.7 1.81 0.317 –1.050 .122 .160 .174 .107 .289 .154 0.77  
8.  Info completeness 3.9 1.69 0.037 –0.295 .458 .313 .163 .044 .157 .142 .244 0.83  
9.  Info adoption 3.2 1.69 0.689 0.401 .629 .386 .036 .365 .321 .211 –.034 .332 0.71

Note: AVE = average variance extracted.

had VIFs that were below the 5 threshold as recommended
by Hair et al. (2010); thus, this result implies that no multi-
collinearity existed among the constructs that were used.
Results
A stepwise multiple regression analysis was adopted to test
hypotheses. The results of the analysis are presented in Table 5.
The resulting relationship among some information quality
dimensions, product ranking, and travelers’ adoption of
information from ORs was strong and highly significant
(R2 = .518, adjusted R2 = .507, F = 65.773, p < .001, df = 5).
The model explained approximately 52% of the variance,
which is indicative of good overall explanatory power.
However, some of the independent variables were not consid-
ered to be significant. The strongest antecedents of travelers’

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Filieri and McLeay 9
Table 5.  Regression Analysis Results, t Value, VIF.
Model Β SE
Variable 0.293
Information timeliness 0.180*** 0.039 4.577
Information 0.045 (n.s.) –1.016 1.259
understandability
Information relevance 0.226*** 0.096 2.719
Information accuracy 0.408*** 0.091 4.464
Information value-added 0.231*** 0.064 2.908
Information completeness 0.061 (n.s.) 0.108 1.108
Information quantity –0.052 (n.s.) 0.056 1.086
Product ranking 0.593*** 0.045 13.077
R2 0.518
Adjusted R2 0.507
F 65.773***
Note: VIF = variance inflation factor; n.s. = nonsignificant.
***p < .001, **p < .05, *p < .10.
adoption of information from ORs were product ranking
(b = .593, p < .001), information accuracy (b = .408, p <
.001), and value-added information (b = .231, p < .001).
Information relevance (b = .226, p < .001) also showed a
strong predicting power, whereas information timeliness
(b = .180, p < .001) had a lower but significant influence on
travelers’ adoption of information. Information quantity (b =
.052, p = nonsignificant), information understanding (b =
.045, p = nonsignificant), and information completeness (b =
.053, p = nonsignificant) did not have a significant influence
on travelers’ adoption of information. Therefore, hypotheses
1, 3, 4, 5, and 8 are supported, while hypotheses 2, 6, and 7
are rejected.
Discussion and Conclusions
ORs represent a type of user-generated content, and the dif-
fusion and adoption of such reviews is constantly growing
among high-involvement travelers. As the importance of
ORs on a traveler’s decision is increasing, businesses are
interested in gaining a better understanding of the factors that
strongly predict travelers’ e-WOM behavior. The findings of
the present research provide several theoretical and practical
contributions.
This research attempted to fill a gap in the literature by
identifying the strongest antecedents of travelers’ informa-
tion adoption from ORs, including both central and periph-
eral cues in the research model. In particular, we investigated
the role that central cues to information processing, includ-
ing six information quality dimensions, as well as two
peripheral cues (information quantity and product ranking),
play in influencing high-involvement travelers’ adoption of
information from online accommodation reviews.
From a theoretical point of view, our results are new as no
previous study has investigated the influence that both cen-
tral and peripheral cues have on high-involvement travelers’
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information adoption. In particular, the tested model includes
a set of factors that have never been tested together previ-
t Value VIF
ously: information quality dimensions, product ranking, and
  information quantity. Moreover, we have advanced the lit-
1.105 erature on e-WOM by identifying new predictors of informa-
1.244 tion adoption from ORs.
The present study has introduced the concept of product
1.346 ranking, a type of categorical information that is considered
1.235 a peripheral cue to information processing. Product ranking
1.329
was found to be the strongest predictor of travelers’ adoption
1.352
of information from ORs and showed a greater influence
1.435
than any information quality dimension. This result contrasts
1.095
with the ELM, which states that high-involvement consum-
 
 
ers analyze the quality of the arguments in an advertisement
  (the influencer) to make a decision (Petty and Cacioppo
1986). Moreover, the results of the present study differ from
previous findings in which information quality had a stron-
ger effect than peripheral cues like information quantity in
high-elaboration situations (Park, Lee, and Han 2007; Lee,
Park and Han 2008; Gupta and Harris 2010). Travelers
appear to adopt both a peripheral and a central route to infor-
mation adoption. The peripheral route is primarily influenced
by the ranking of accommodation. This is complemented by
adopting a central route and using specific information qual-
ity dimensions to process information. Therefore, our results
call for a further development of the ELM in the context of
ORs on accommodations. Moreover, our results imply that
COPs can adopt both a central and a peripheral route to influ-
ence high-involvement travelers.
In the present study, we have used product ranking and
information quantity to represent peripheral routes to persua-
sion. Product ranking emerged as the strongest antecedent of
high-involvement travelers’ adoption of information from
ORs, which is a new finding in e-WOM research. This result
may be influenced by the fact that the number and the variety
of accommodations such as hotels available in a specific des-
tination are often high. Therefore, travelers may prefer to
adopt information short cuts to reduce the number of alterna-
tives that they might consider to book. In doing so, they
adopt information on the average score of overall travelers’
evaluations of such accommodation at a destination.
According to a rational view, travelers economize on time
and effort when they search for information (Solomon 2011)
and overall product ranking is a type of categorical informa-
tion that helps travelers to reduce the number of alternatives
as well as facilitates a rapid retrieval of the best ranked
accommodations at a destination. Rankings are also helpful
for evaluating and comparing different options, thereby
reducing the time and the effort needed to identify the most
suitable accommodation. For example, travelers looking for
accommodation in a destination where they have never been
before will have little knowledge of the destination. Thus,
they may think that if previous travelers have evaluated a
hotel highly, that hotel should be good.
Another significant result comes from the analysis of
the influence of different information quality dimensions on
10 Journal of Travel Research XX(X)
travelers’ adoption of information from ORs. Existing stud-
ies in e-commerce have used information quality as a com-
posite construct without investigating the influence of each
single information quality dimension (Park, Lee, and Han
2007; Park and Lee 2008). The findings of this study high-
light that some information quality dimensions are more
important than others in predicting travelers’ adoption of
information. Information accuracy, value-added informa-
tion, and information relevance strongly predicted travelers’
adoption of information from ORs; information timeliness
was less important in explaining the relationship, while other
dimensions like information understandability and informa-
tion completeness did not have a significant influence.
Among the information quality dimensions, information
accuracy was the strongest predictor of traveler’s adoption
of information from ORs. Through these findings, we may
infer that travelers adopt information because they believe
information comes from real travelers who provide an accu-
rate evaluation of accommodations.
Another information quality antecedent relating to the
information adoption from ORs is information value-added.
The provision of both positive and negative information
provides travelers with a critical description of accommoda-
tions and helps them to better evaluate their quality. For
instance, value-added information may help travelers to
detect what has been shadowed by marketing communica-
tions. For example, by reading ORs a traveler may discover
that a special offer might hide a hotel’s ongoing renovations
or that a hotel is located in an unsafe or noisy area. Thus,
travelers adopt information contained in ORs in their decision-
making process because ORs help them to discover what
might not have been reported by the property or by a travel
agent’s marketing communications.
Information relevance is another important antecedent of
travelers’ adoption of information. ORs provide information
on different travel experiences; thus, they potentially satisfy
a plethora of information needs because they are written by a
variety of target groups, with each one reporting their own
needs, opinions, evaluations, and experiences. Thus, travel-
ers adopt information from ORs because they get informa-
tion that might satisfy their specific needs.
Information timeliness has a moderate influence on the
adoption of information. This finding may be due to the fact
that travelers not only adopt current information from ORs;
but they also incorporate past reviews when making deci-
sions. Contrary to previous findings that revealed that infor-
mation quantity is an important factor in e-WOM as it
predicts product sales (Duan, Bin, and Whinston 2005; Liu
2006; Chevalier and Mayzlin 2006; Dellarocas, Zhang, and
Awad 2007), as well as consumer behavior (Park, Lee, and
Han 2007; Park and Kim 2008; Sher and Lee 2009; Gupta
and Harris 2010), the current research has found that infor-
mation quantity does not appear to exert a significant influ-
ence on travelers’ adoption of information from ORs. The
nonsignificant predicting value of this construct may be
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explained by the fact that travelers do not adopt information
volume as an information short cut for detecting product
popularity. Today, most COPs contain a larger number of
reviews than they did in the past; thus, most websites have an
acceptable number of reviews for each individual hotel or
accommodation. For example, in 2005, Tripadvisor hosted
one million customer reviews, whereas in 2013, this COP
hosts more than 75 million customer reviews (Tripadvisor
2005, 2013). This result allows us to infer that travelers will
not adopt information based on the volume of reviews; rather
they will adopt categorical information such as overall
accommodations ranking, which summarizes the evaluations
provided by all travelers who have reviewed accommoda-
tions in a destination. Moreover, the overall ranking of an
accommodation may be an indicator of product quality and
appears to be more important than product popularity when
adopting information from ORs. For instance, the categorical
information about a hotel ranked in first position, which has
been reviewed for example by 20 users, will be more influ-
ential than the information on a hotel that is ranked 10th and
has been reviewed by 80 reviewers. Therefore, a hotel that
has been reviewed by 20 customers and another one that has
been reviewed by 80 customers will be equal in travelers’
eyes. Consequently, a larger number of reviews is not always
favorable.
Information understandability and information complete-
ness did not influence travelers’ adoption of information
from ORs. Thus, even if reviews are not always clear or very
well written, travelers adopt them for other reasons.
Increasingly, language is not a barrier, as most websites have
a system of translation from English, which is the most used
language on the web. Our results show that travelers are not
influenced by the completeness of information. Most travel-
ers appear to only search for information that satisfies their
particular needs. Therefore, they are not interested in know-
ing everything about specific accommodations and may not
read all the content in a review; rather they are only inter-
ested in the kind of information that satisfies their informa-
tion needs.
Implications
Practical Implications
The results of this study have important implications for
marketing practitioners in the e-tourism and other industries.
For instance, COP developers should pay a lot of attention to
categorical information, such as product rankings, which
help travelers to reduce the accommodation alternatives
available for purchase. Moreover, COP designers should
attempt to provide more peripheral cues that travelers can
use to rapidly obtain the type of information they are looking
for. For example, the use of meta-data techniques, such as
red and green meta-tags to respectively show the most fre-
quently mentioned strengths and weaknesses of a particular
Filieri and McLeay 11
hotel could be used to facilitate travelers’ evaluation of the
services of accommodations.
From the managerial side, hotel managers should be
aware that through ORs travelers may become comarketers
(Sigala, Christou, and Gretzel 2012) by producing reviews
that influence other travelers’ decisions more strongly than
traditional marketing communications (Bickart and Schindler
2001; Senecal and Nantel 2004). Whereas in the past, a top–
down system of product ranking was provided by acknowl-
edged opinion leaders and experts in a particular sector (e.g.,
Lonely Planet for accommodations), a form of bottom–up
evaluation of tourism-related products and services based on
customer evaluations is emerging. This might have negative
repercussions on the business of official and well-known rat-
ings agencies in the tourism sector. In fact, travelers might be
more willing to trust other travelers’ ranking than the ratings
provided by business-oriented organizations and groups of
tourism experts.
Another important implication of this research is the
influence that specific information quality dimensions have
on travelers’ adoption of information from ORs. Whereas the
role of categorical information (i.e., product ranking) is to
orient travelers’ choice, the role of information quality is to
provide accurate, critical, relevant, and timely information to
travelers.
The accuracy of the information is a powerful influencer
in the traveler decision-making process. Accordingly, inde-
pendent COPs should refine and improve the techniques that
they use to guarantee the accuracy of ORs in order to avoid
viral marketing activities that spread fraudulent or fake
reviews. Thus, COPs might display the Facebook profile of
reviewers as a way to increase the perceived reliability of the
information provided by reviewers. Websites could also
develop a star ranking system to evaluate the expertise of
reviewers, which could be based, for example, on the fre-
quency of product/service reviewed and on the experience of
use of different tourism products/services in the same cate-
gory (e.g., for travel websites, this might be the range of
accommodations booked and the number of destinations
visited).
Travelers are adopting information from ORs to acknowl-
edge the kind of information that accommodation marketers
might be hiding or not communicating properly on their
website. Since travelers get to know both the negatives and
positives of accommodations, marketing campaigns and
websites should be more in line with the real quality of the
product and services they offer. A recommendation for tour-
ism marketers that comes out from this research is that a
more sober and less pompous communication strategy
should be adopted when promoting an accommodation.
Accordingly, a high discrepancy between what is being said
in brand communications and what is being experienced by
travelers might motivate more travelers to negatively rate a
product or to advise other travelers about its “hidden”
weaknesses.
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Relevance is another important informational factor that
COPs and e-travel agencies should consider. Thus, travelers
spend time and effort only to read the information fitting
their information needs. Therefore, it is important to segment
the information and content according to the information
needs of different typologies of travelers. For instance, some
COPs provide information about the typical client (e.g.,
groups, friends, romance, and solo traveler) of a specific
accommodation, providing information details about the tar-
get group of the accommodation.
In summary, COPs should monitor information quality
dimensions because they contribute to influencing travelers’
decisions to adopt information from them. By refining these
dimensions, they may attract more reviewers and travelers,
improve search engine positioning, and increase brand
awareness. Independent COPs are already attempting to
increase the amount of users and reviews on their websites in
order to improve travelers’ awareness of their brand. In
doing so, some of them are not effectively regulating the
quality of ORs through strict information quality standards
and advanced systems to track false reviewers. This has led
to some of them being criticized by the BBC in the United
Kingdom about the reliability of posts on websites such as
Tripadvisor (Morrison 2012 [AQ: 4]). Nevertheless,
some online organizations are already developing some sys-
tems to control the quality of the content provided by travel-
ers. Accordingly, Wikipedia is reviewing the quality of its
entries through its volunteer administrators (Wikipedians).
Since information accuracy is a strong antecedent of travel-
ers’ adoption of information from ORs, similar initiatives
should be taken by COPs by using the criteria identified in
this study. Moreover, COPs could offer some type of reward
mechanism for travelers who post high-quality reviews.
Limitations and Future Research
The present study has a number of limitations. The sample
was composed mainly by Italian respondents; however, the
decision to conduct the study in this country was made in
order to respond to the need to widen the geographic and
cultural scope of e-WOM research, as most existing studies
have been conducted in the United States and in Asian coun-
tries (Chan and Ngai 2011). The present study has tested the
model only among high-involvement consumers; therefore,
a replication of the study among low-involvement consum-
ers would be useful.
Despite the strength of snowballing for being a convenient
and economic method to collect data, the researcher has
limited control over the composition of the final sample.
However, snowball sampling was appropriate because this
research was not aiming to measure the variation of the vari-
ables across a population; rather, the purpose was to test the
hypothesized relationships among variables (He and Li 2010).
Moreover, the present study did not distinguish two main
traveler motives: business and leisure. Business travelers are
12 Journal of Travel Research XX(X)
generally less involved and motivated to spend high amounts
of time to search for information on accommodation than
holiday makers; therefore, they may be more willing to adopt
only peripheral cues to evaluate ORs. On the contrary, lei-
sure travelers might be more involved because travel is a
very expensive and risky item and sometimes is the most
expensive purchase for a family during the year (Lewis and
Chambers 2000). Therefore, leisure travelers might be more
willing to adopt only central cues to information processing.
In this study, we focus on travelers’ adoption of information
from ORs of accommodations. Future research could test our
model across different product categories (e.g., high tech
products) in order to generalize our results.
Further research could test the model proposed in this
research on different typologies of COPs. In fact, results may
differ for two typologies of COPs: independent websites
(i.e., Tripadvisor.com) and e-merchants (i.e., Booking.com).
E-merchants publish ORs written only by travelers who have
previously purchased a product, while in an independent
website travelers only need a valid email address to publish a
review. Lee and Youn (2009) found no difference in the
influence that branded review websites and independent
COPs exercise on travelers’ WOM recommendations.
However, travelers may believe that the accuracy of infor-
mation provided in independent COPs may be higher than
the information provided in brand websites. Therefore,
researchers might find a difference in the travelers’ likeli-
hood to adopt information from ORs in the two types of
websites.
Despite limitations, the results of this study enhance the
understanding of the factors that influence travelers’ adop-
tion of information from online accommodation reviews.
Acknowledgments
The authors would like to thank Dr Bridget Major, the JTR editor,
and two anonymous reviewers for their helpful comments on earlier
drafts of this paper.
Declaration of Conflicting Interests
The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to
the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
Funding
The author(s) received no financial support for the research, author-
ship, and/or publication of this article.
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Author Biographies
Raffaele Filieri is Senior Lecturer in Marketing at Newcastle
Business School, Northumbria University, UK. His research inter-
ests include e-tourism, tourism marketing, sustainable tourism and
innovation in tourism.
Fraser McLeay is Professor of Strategic Marketing Management
and co-chair of the Marketing, Travel and Tourism Management
Subject Group at Northumbria University. His research interests
include branding, the tourist experience and e-WOM.