A Research On Communication Effect Of Image, Word-of-Mouth, Text And Their Influence On Tourist Expectations

Before the popularity of the Internet, there are several ways for people to get information:television, newspapers, magazines, books, friends and their relatives as well. However, with the rapid development of information technology, people are more likely to obtain information through the internet, consequently, a growing number of tourists are turning to the internet to acquire tourism information. Potential tourists could generate expectations to certain tourism destination based on the image they have through videos, word-of-mouth and texts. Taking the image, word-of-mouth and texts into consideration, this paper will try to answer the following questions.First, which one has a better communication effect among image, word-of-mouth and text?Second, what factors affect the communication effect of image, word-of-mouth and text?Third, are there any differences between non-tourism information and tourism information in shaping people’s image of the destination?Last, what’s the relationship between tourist image and tourist expectations?Both quantitative research methods and qualitative research methods are used in the study. In the part of quantitative research, first, collecting information through questionnaire, then inputting and sorting data by spss16.0. After that using ANOVA to analyze the communication effect of image, word-of-mouth and text from three aspects:cognitive image, affective image and conative image. In the part of qualitative research, first, analyzing the factors what influence the communication effect of image, word-of-mouth and text. Second, analyzing the materials of interviews and texts, coding tourist image according to the open coding, axle coding and selective coding. Finally, the paper analyzes the relationship between image and expectations.The main conclusions of the study are as follows:First, in the level of cognitive image, there is no significant difference among image, word-of-mouth and text, but significant differences on individual items. Second, There are significant differences among image, word-of-mouth and text in the level of affective image. The communication effect of word-of-mouth and text are better than image. In the level of conative image, the differences are still significant, word-of-mouth is the best, followed by text and image.Second, through interviews, this study suggests that the following factors affect the communication effect.①The way of communication affects the affective image. The video shows the destination through narrative which uses rational power to persuade the audience. However, the author of travel notes always expresses his own feelings of the destination in their texts. The author of travel notes plays the role of opinion leaders in the process of communication. Their suggestions and views influence the audience.②The contents of communication affect the cognitive image and affective image.③The credibility of the information source affect the overall communication effect. The contents of communication are determined by the transmitter. But from the perspective of propaganda or persuasion, people may have different reactions towards the same information that come from different transmitters. The reason is that people will judge the authenticity and value of the information based on the credibility of the transmitters themselves first.④The individualism also play a part in affecting the overall communication effects. People may have different background, knowledge structure, curiosity, character and habits, thus the degree they’d like to accept also have their own features. These features will affect the communication effect directly or indirectly. But compared with affective image and conative image, these features have little influence on cognitive image.Third, In order to study the relationship between image and expectations, tourist image was encoded in the study. Based on the selective coding of original image, induced image and complex image, further forming7axle coding that including attractive image, historical image, cultural image, leisure image, life image, positive image and negative image.Fourth, through the analysis of image and expectations, this study suggests that different image affect different aspects of expectations. The role between image and expectations are mutual. The study specifically proposed the following three propositions.①D Not only the induced image but also the original image determine the expectations before people go to the destination.②Image of attractions is an indispensable part of dominant expectations.③The relationship between image and expectations are mutual. Implicit expectations affect the complex image directly. The realization of implicit expectations tends to generate positive complex image.Concerning the structure of this paper, it consists of six parts:The first part is introduction, which including the background of the study, theoretical and practical significance, the content of the study.The second part is literature review. This part review the relative studies mainly from three fields that are communication effect, image and expectations. On this basis, this paper put forward the research problems.The third part is the structure of the study. There are study design, study hypothesis, the definition of related concepts, the choice of destination, questionnaire design and research methods.The fourth part is data analysis. This part has study the communication effect of image, word-of-mouth and text from three levels:cognitive image, affective image and conative image. At the end of the chapter, this paper analyzes the factors that influence communication effect through interviews with respondents.The fifth part is about recognition of tourist image and the relationship between image and expectations. This part encoding tourist image mainly through analyzing some materials including interviews travel notes, then encoding tourism images. Based on the codes of image, the study probes into the relationship between image and expectations.The sixth part is conclusion. This part summarizes the whole study, including conclusion, limits and prospect of this research.