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Which Is More Important in Online Review Usefulness, Heuristic or Systematic Cue?

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Information and Communication Technologies in Tourism 2017

Abstract

Online reviews are significant in the hotel and tourism industry because hotel accommodations and travel products are high-risk products due to their inherent intangibility. However, because of high information load on the Internet, the issue that identifies factors influencing potential customers’ perception about online reviews has been treated as crucial. Drawn from the Heuristic-Systematic Model (HSM), this study investigated the roles of heuristic and systematic cues of online reviews affecting potential hotel customers’ perception about it. In this study, reviewers’ identity, level of the reviewer, review star ratings, and attached hotel photo were identified as heuristic cues, whereas review, length, cognitive level of review and negativity in review constitute systematic cues. A binary logistic regression was adopted and only systematic cues of online reviews were found to affect the usefulness of it. Moreover, we investigated the moderating effects of seasonality in the relationships between systematic cues of online reviews and usefulness.

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Acknowledgements

This work was supported by the Ministry of Education of the Republic of Korea and the National Research Foundation of Korea (NRF-2016S1A3A2925146).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Hotel Management, Graduate School, Kyung Hee University, Seoul, Republic of Korea

    Hee Chung Chung & Hyuae Lee

  2. College of Hotel and Tourism Management, Kyung Hee University, Seoul, Republic of Korea

    Chulmo Koo & Namho Chung

Authors
  1. Hee Chung Chung
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  2. Hyuae Lee
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  3. Chulmo Koo
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  4. Namho Chung
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Namho Chung .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Institute of Tourism, HES-SO Valais-Wallis, Sierre, Valais, Switzerland

    Roland Schegg

  2. School of Hospitality and Tourism Management, University of Surrey, Guildford, United Kingdom

    Brigitte Stangl

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Chung, H.C., Lee, H., Koo, C., Chung, N. (2017). Which Is More Important in Online Review Usefulness, Heuristic or Systematic Cue?. In: Schegg, R., Stangl, B. (eds) Information and Communication Technologies in Tourism 2017. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-51168-9_42

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