7 Challenges And Opportunities Of On Line Customer Review

Before the days of the Internet, if a family wanted to travel to a far-off, exotic locale, they would have to either find a local travel agent or call a travel agency and plan their getaway. In the 1990’s, the Internet became a staple of everyday life and began entering many homes. As the availability of the Internet increased, so did the services available to clients. With the increasing availability of the World Wide Web the travel industry found itself faced with revolutionizing changes. All of the tools that were once solely available to travel agents now became readily available to anyone with access to the Internet and a search engine. Websites quickly formed around the idea of providing consumers with quick vacation planning ideas at low costs. Getting

Today’s on-line travel market is succeeding because the companies are using a more software-centric, online business model termed “E-commerce.” This has become the popular avenue for businesses as it mirrors the ideas of mobility. The sheer amount of data available, coupled with the advanced operating systems and social media platforms, have created new possibilities for E-commerce organizations. The infrastructure of E-commerce has expanded into platforms such as peer-to-peer networking, crowd-sourcing, social websites, and mobile devices and media. E-commerce trends are findings ways to incorporate every aspect of our daily lives into an online package associated with our everyday needs (Fishbein, 2013).

In this essay I will be explaining and evaluating the method chosen and used by Pinewood Hotel in order to gain a better insight onto how aspects of their website are rated, and how it compares to their competitors. In addition to this, I will evaluate the findings that were gained from the research method used by the researchers at Pinewood Hotel.

TripAdvisor is the world’s largest travel site, it enables potential customers to see other opinions before they part with their cash. TripAdvisor has over 60 million visitors per month looking through over 75 million reviews of hotels and restaurants. The site operates in 30 countries worldwide making it a powerful and unstoppable force. Tripadvisor.co.uk (2013) The next review site that even comes close to TripAdvisor is booking.com with a mere 14 million reviews per month compared to the review giant of TripAdvisor.

The bargaining power of buyers in the leisure & recreation industry has increased with the use of online travel booking and online customer reviews. Buyers are now able to become better informed with the services that they are purchasing and can

The success in the travel industry depends on the knowledge of the changing trend and maintaining pace with it. The company needs to respond to all technological changes with equivalent measures in order to be in line or even surpass its competitors. Focusing on the users’ and customers’ preferences, wishes, and fears, TripAdvisor will be able to enlarge its brand awareness and hence gain brand loyalty. This will be contributing to the company’s

àAs a result, the number of user-oriented travel tools on airlines’ direct Web sites increased dramatically in just a few short years. Aggregator Web sites : —  Such as Expedia.com, Orbitz.com, and Priceline.com —  A pseudo-competitive position relative to the airlines' own direct Web sites but also offered services beyond flight purchase, including hotel and vacation packages. —  The airline paid a fee to the

Cunningham et al (2007), mentions that an online environment cannot afford an one-to-one physical contact between the customer and the business, using this as a basis to

Of the total travel market only 1% was generated from the online travel market, and consumers still depended on customer call centers to confirm payment status. To counteract the risks it is important that Lucky Air create an effective business-consumer-business model that will do the obvious and draw consumers to their site and make an online purchase of airfare. To draw in consumers Lucky Air will need to focus on Web 2.0, which is the unique feature or features of e-commerce and the Internet coming together as applications and social media technologies. Web 2.0 will allow for a better online experience with inter-human connections, consumer interacted blogs and the staff to constantly monitor the site to provide consumer feedback. Web 2.0 is crucial to providing customer relationship management. Promoting reviews from consumers in regards to destinations and airline experience are important so the consumer can feel they are important enough to expose the truth from other consumers even negative remarks. But the single most important part of focusing on e-commerce is the ability to provide a online experience and advanced technology that enables customer self-service without the need for multiple customer call centers. Customers should be able to pay for fares, cancel fares, use a safe payment method that can verify a credit card, check on the status of flights and use rewards programs

Yelp is a popular crowd-sourced local business review and social networking site. This paper aims to find out about how Yelp has impacted business’s. In my research I have found that Yelp impacts business’s positively and negatively. Consumers are becoming more familiar with online review sites like yelp, therefore putting more trust into them. These reviews are influencing potential new customers in the market. Positive reviews are associated with generating more profit and revenue.

Referrals and recommendations are primary sources of law firm growth, and traditional offline recommendations are still commonplace. However, if lawyers do not pay attention to social media and Google My Business online reviews and testimonials, your firm will remain stagnant while your good standing dwindles. Now is an opportune time to pay attention to the online customers and respond to them. Their word of mouth is paramount to a lawyer's future.

Over the last several years the process of reaching out to customers has been continually changing. Part of reason for this is because more people are turning to the Internet as a way to be able to promote their products and communicate to a larger audience. A good example of this can be seen with the election of Barack Obama in 2008, with him using this medium as a way to gain support and funding for his campaign. This allowed him to utilize this new technology to effectively connect with and inform voters about key issues. Over the course of time this helped his campaign to gain momentum. Once this occurred is when he was able to stand out against his rivals through effectively utilizing these tools. (Miller, 2008)

If however, the information does not correspond with these needs, it is logical to be rejected. The importance of relevance is also in line with the findings of Cheung, Lee, & Rabjohn (2008). Secondly, an explanation for the insignificance of the timeliness factor could be found in the measurement construct. Only one item was used to test this factor which might explain the non-significance of this variable. This is also explained further in the limitations and further research section. Another possible explanation for the not significant relationship between timeliness and purchase intention might be found in the context of the study. In the online environment, topics related to hotels may not be as time sensitive as fashion topics, for example. Reviews from the past could even be perceived as valuable, because they can help customers to track down the reputation of a certain hotel. Thirdly, accuracy was also found insignificant and an explanation could be that it is a rather subjective term. A certain message could be perceived as accurate for some and imprecise for others. Moreover, the participants of the experiment could not know if the information in the reviews was definitely true or definitely false. Furthermore, for people that are looking for additional information in order to make the right choice, it might be difficult to decide whether or not the buzz is accurate, correct or reliable. This is because most of

Social media has played a significant role in consumer decision making, including such areas raising awarness, sharing information and opinions as well as postpurchase experience ( Mangold and Faulds,2009). It turns out that consumers tend to trust knowledge and experience shared by other customers on social media more than those opinions reviewed by the manufacturer or the marketer of the product or the service.(Linchi Kowk,2012)

Online travel services provide the benefits of large amounts of free information, 24/7 availability and the potential for significant reductions in price.