| Along with the speedy development and popular applications of internet technology, tourism informatization becomes a noticeable new trend in tourism industry. More and more tourists, industrial people and governmental officers have been utilizing internet to gather information, discuss itinerary, promote tourism products and provide services. As a result, a large number of tourism websites emerged. On the other hand, based on the developed technology of Web2.0, traditional B-C platform is no longer able to satisfy public demands, and interactions with customer become more important in web service development. Moreover, SNS website forum developed quickly, and now becomes a useful online communication platform with greater importance in online tourism marketing. Therefore, the empirical study of online tourism forum conception is of great importance in both theory and practice perspectives.In this backdrop, by using the way of content analysis and questionnaire analysis, this research combined qualitative and quantitative ways, doing comprehensive analysis from the macro and micro aspects of the mode of development of domestic tourism online community today.By using a sample from Tianya BBS, this research aims to conduct a research consisting of two parts. The first part include the content analysis of the2292cases collected in the month of December10,2011to January10,2012in the BBS, while in the second part, an online survey data is used to construct a perception model through multiple comparison and structural equation model.Several importance conclusion are highlighted as follows:First, all posters are categorized into several types, namely, sharing posters, enquiry posters, feedback posters, information posters, social posters, promotion posters, and posters for other purposes. According to their click rates, and reply rates, it is found that, sharing poster constitutes the largest parts, and its click and reply rates are also the highest, suggesting that the share of information becomes the a major incentive for online participation. Followed by it, there is also a large number of promotion posters from tourism business people. However, this type of posters is characterized by low click and response rates, indicating low efficiency for marketing. The third most posters are the information posters with high click rate and low reply rate, showing that online browsers are more likely to accept the information instead of active participations. With regard to other poster types, their presence indicate the heterogeneity of motivations and demands.Second, based on the research findings, an online demand and perception model is constructed, which is based on the paticipants’deman conception,the demand consists of functionality demand, socialization demand, psychology demand, entertainment demand, and business demand, and Business demand is first mentioned in this research as a major contribution of this research.Third, through the analysis of online survey data, the results suggest that:(Ⅰ). The five demand construct is confirmed as the research hypothesis;(Ⅱ). Apart from business demand, other four demand factors are of similar average values, ranging from3.5to5. The highest average value is found for functionality demand, while the lowest comes from business one;(Ⅲ). Based on multiple comparisons, the research find that gender does not influence motivation, involvement, and demand factors, while education is significantly associated with involvement and decision-making;(Ⅳ). The results from structural equation models find that functionality, psychology and entertainment demand are positively associated with tourist’ decision making, and this decision making also exerts positive impact on the involvement. However, there is no retrospective influence from involvement to decision-making.Finally, based on research findings, several implications are provided to website managers, industry people, and governments。... |
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