A Study On Social Media Electronic Word Of Mouth(ewom),Emotions And Tourists Decision Making

The constant growth of social networks has led to the ever increasing use of them in everyday life and,as a result,information is increasingly found through these means.This communication trend is also found in the tourism industry where most tourists rely on electronic word of mouth(ewom)about a destination to make a travel decision,especially electronic word of mouth that appeals emotionally to them.Understanding electronic word of mouth remains crucial as tourist reviews or posts on blogs and other social media platforms effectively substitute the websites projected information,playing a vital role in shaping the tourist ‘s final evaluation and decision to select or reject a destination.Also an in depth understanding of electronic word of mouth and what aspects tourists attach emotions to could be a way of helping tourism managers manage their destination better.So,one might ask-why do tourist managers have to study electronic word of mouth when they can’t control what goes there? Though logical but the real question is… why doesn’t every tourist manager study electronic word of mouth? It’s about gaining insights into their brand and market and not necessarily about control.Social media platforms continue to increase in relevance,giving and creating more opportunities for them to implement a more customerfocused marketing strategy.The dynamic nature of the tourist behavior should therefore urge tourism managers to consistently develop and improve upon existing marketing strategies,as well as understand new developing customer behavior.Hence the study focuses on finding out the impact of electronic word of mouth elements in this case: richness in details,author travel experience,simple and friendly writing style,empathy with author and number of electronic word of mouth by author on tourist decision and emotions attached to them.The study adopts a quantitative research method using both descriptive statistics and principal component analysis to analyze the study data.Results showed all three concepts to be correlated,where electronic word of mouth has positive influence emotions and tourist decision,and emotions positively influences tourist decisions.Descriptive analysis found more of the sample size to agree with attaching emotional values to these elements,however further analysis showed that they were not significantly influencing tourist emotions precisely.In addition,the study also contributed by revealing richness in details and empathy with author to be significantly influencing tourist decisions.