Elsevier

Tourism Management

Volume 33, Issue 6, December 2012, Pages 1468-1482
Tourism Management

Web users’ behavioural patterns of tourism information search: From online to offline

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tourman.2012.01.016Get rights and content

Abstract

This paper presents a conceptual framework of Web users’ engagement in tourism information search for a comprehensive understanding of their integrated online and offline search behaviour. The information search experiences are characterised as a process constituting some common elements: prior knowledge and searching experiences, online searching strategies, processing and recording information, barriers to online searching, reasons for ending an online search, summarising information, exchanging information and searching for more information through other sources. Such behaviour goes beyond the scope of information searching and captures the other activities, including information processing, utilising and disseminating. The grounded theory research method is employed as an inductive investigative process in which the authors construct the framework by systematically collecting and analysing data. The aim of this research method is to build a theory. The data sets consist of both semi-structured in-depth interviews with subjects and their field observations based on online searching. A theoretical model incorporating 10 propositions is proposed for future testing.

Highlights

► We propose a behavioural framework of Web users’ tourism information search. ► We provide an information search model across online and offline environments. ► We describe tourism information search as a process with related activities.

Introduction

With the continued growth of population who regularly surf the Internet, the World Wide Web (WWW) has become the indispensable channel for people seeking to use tourism information (Buhalis & Law, 2008). The Internet offers a rich environment for the information and resources needed by potential travellers who either want to browse the Web pages to gain familiarity with and to locate something of interest to them, or else desire to search on a given topic and retrieve the relevant information. The advantages of online tourism information search include the relatively low cost, customised information, ease of product comparison, interactivity, virtual community formation, and 24-h accessibility (Wang, Head, & Arthur, 2002).

However, the Internet is not the only channel for tourism information searching. The information can be gathered electronically, or from other information sources such as guidebooks and word-of-mouth referrals (Pearce & Schott, 2005). Tourists even mix Internet and other non-media information sources, including commercial brochures and travel agents for planning trips (Seabra, Abrantes, & Lages, 2007). Gronflaten (2009) indicated that tourism information search depends on both online and offline modes. Little is known about how individuals search for tourism information using online and offline sources, how they search for tourism information from online to offline, or how they use the multiple information sources. The lack of studies in this regard is evidence that would support more research on this issue. Posing the above questions is meaningful, since tourism information search may be characterised as a process: information seekers first describe a request via a query in the e-commerce environment and then the WWW system locates information that matches or satisfies the request, after which they turn to other sources for more information. Exploring tourism information search behaviour with a combination of online and offline modes is one way to gain a better understanding of the comprehensive search process, in particular which activities form their search experiences and how these activities occur sequentially during their searching.

As far back as the 1980s, a few researchers (e.g., Ellis, 1989, Kuhlthau, 1987, Wilson, 1981) explored the library users’ perspective of information seeking behaviour and proposed several models of information search process. An individual’s search process is assumed to follow a certain pattern. Based on this rationale, online tourism information search may be viewed as the interaction between information seekers and the online system. If the general search pattern could be identified and broken down into the basic behavioural characteristics which are significant in defining and maintaining the competitive advantages of e-commerce, such a model of search behaviour would be able to serve as the basis for improving the interfaces and functionality of existing search systems. The varied needs of tourism information searchers may be considered by using more sophisticated systems in the future. Furthermore, the difficulties that individuals encounter with the search process may be fully understood and their searching experiences subsequently improved. The marketers may then analytically follow through in developing marketing strategies step by step based on the search process.

The main purpose of this study is to develop a conceptual model to articulate and delineate the searching attributes that describe Web users’ tourism information search behaviour. We attempt to answer the following question: How do Web users describe their tourism information search process? This research focuses on the behavioural aspects of the search activities occurring during the search process. The central research question has the following associated research questions:

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    Is there a common pattern for tourism information search for Web users?

  • -

    What are the fundamental dimensions of the Web-based search process model?

The results gained from this research project will contribute to filling the gaps in the literature, including providing the conceptualisation of tourism information search behaviour occurring online, offline and in-between, thereby enabling research to move forward to further empirically explore and understand the relationships based on various information search activities. The framework that integrates both online and offline tourism information search behaviour, incorporating 10 propositions is proposed. However, the proposed theoretical model has not been empirically tested. The existence of proposed relationships among the variables can neither be confirmed nor be disconfirmed.

It should be noted that the terms Web users and tourism information searchers are used interchangeably (and are sometimes identical). The latter refers to those who usually use the Internet to search for various types of information, including tourism information; their purpose in engaging in tourism information search may be to gain some experiences or to achieve specific goals. These individuals apparently do not include those who do not use the WWW or do not search for tourism information online.

Section snippets

Tourism information search

Tourism information search includes internal search as well as the multiple external information sources used. Beatty and Smith (1987) claimed that people usually attempt to search for information in their memory first and, if an internal information source does not work, they then go out and search for relevant information. It is therefore useful to review the literature which focuses on internal search and multiple sources of tourism information. Because of the increased attention paid to

Research method

The research method that was used for this study was ground theory. This approach is a primarily inductive investigative process in which the researchers formulate a theory regarding a phenomenon by systematically gathering and analysing relevant data (Glaser, 1998, Glaser and Strauss, 1967, Strauss and Corbin, 1998). The aim of the research method is to build theory. Instead of beginning a study with a preconceived theory that needs to be proved, the researchers begin with a general area of

Research results

Eight major categories seemed to satisfactorily subsume the important characteristics of tourism information search behaviour: prior knowledge and experiences, online searching strategies, processing and recording information, barriers to information searching, reasons for ending an online search, summarising information, exchanging and sharing information, and searching for more information through other auxiliary sources. These categories and their properties illustrated in Fig. 2 represent

Theoretical implication

The conceptual framework described in this paper provides a relatively comprehensive answer to the research question: How do Web users search for tourism information from online to offline? The user-centred approach of human–computer interaction has been adopted to describe tourism information search as a behaviour that includes cognitive aspects of information searches and their interaction with the information environments (Kuhlthau, 1993). This research not only highlights Web users’

Acknowledgements

The authors would like to thank the National Science Council of Taiwan, R.O.C. for financially supporting this work under the contract NSC95-2415-H-324-004-SSS.

Thanks are also extended to the anonymous reviewers and the Editor-in-Chief, Professor Chris Ryan, for their valuable suggestions and comments.

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