The Impact of Hotel Reviews Posted by Guests on Customers' Purchase Process and Expectations

From the first article published on the topic of electronic word-of-mouth – eWOM (Stauss, 1997) research has rapidly increased, underlining the importance of this phenomenon both in academic and business contexts. The purchasing behaviour of the customer has increasingly changed with the development of new technologies. Therefore, what had traditionally been defined as word-of-mouth (WOM) (Arndt, 1967; Koenig, 1985) needed to be reconsidered and studied in light of recent changes (Buttle, 1998; Breazeale, 2009). Electronic WOM through online reviews on specific websites, company websites, blogs and communities influences various steps of the consumer decision-making and purchasing processes (Schindler and Bickart, 2005) and his expectations of the service. The objective of the paper is to study the impact that customer feedback/reviews posted on “non-transactional” websites have on the consumer decision-making process and on tourist expectations in the hospitality industry, which is particularly affected by this new trend. Many travel services are now bought on the net using electronic distribution systems: flights, hotel stays, car rentals, etc. (Nielsen, 2010; PhoCusWright, 2010). Online reviews play a key role in purchasing travel services (Nielsen, 2010) and “non-transactional” website traffic increased by 4% from 2007 to 2009 despite a decrease for transactional websites (OTA, company websites, etc.) (PhoCusWright, 2009). Therefore, hotel companies should comprehend the way customer feedback influences other consumers’ decisions and expectations in order to develop specific marketing strategies that also consider the synergy among social media and the development of mobile technologies.