The Case Study: TripAdvisor

University of New South Wales, Sydney

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INTRODUCTION

The way consumers search for information and make decisions about services and

products has dramatically changed due to User-Generated Content (UGC). TripAdvisor

remains a forerunner in the creation of UGC-focused travel site.

WHY TRIPADVISOR IS APPEALING TO CONSUMERS

(i)Theoretical understanding of the TripAdvisor’s appeal

TripAdvisor is the most significant site for hospitality and hotel industry. It has hit

340 million distinct guests each month based on most global traffic. The site users’ have

contributed more than 350 million opinions and reviews. TripAdvisor covers over 6.5 million

restaurants, attractions, and accommodation. Nearly 230 new contributions are created and

posted per minute. TripAdvisor operates in 48 markets globally. It is the renowned site for

brand reputation building. It drives bookings for property managers and hotel executives. It

provides information and review about tour operators, attraction, and theme park. It offers

services to entertainment attractions, restaurants, and museums (Gupta & Herman 2011).

It is a high-authority organization which influences SEO (Search Engine

Optimization). Thus, it helps companies attract customers. Enterprises with more and better

customer reviews on TripAdvisor benefit from higher SEO rankings. TripAdvisor allows

firms to improve their SEO performance. This drives additional sales alongside revenue via

search marketing. TripAdvisor has also been a useful tool for consumer trust fostering as it

helps firms get authenticity (Gupta & Herman 2011). Authenticity is valued over perfection.

TripAdvisor facilitates sales and marketing. It works best when companies already have

excellent reviews. It has helped firms respond efficiently to valuable customer feedback thus

creating positive customer experiences.

TripAdvisor achieves its appeal through 4 website design principles: categorization,

overview, linkage, and filtering. TripAdvisor’s review system has categorized reviews based
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on essential attributes of products. The system has allowed for the presentation of an

overview of the products’ attributes (Gupta & Herman 2011). The linkage principle enables

individual reviews to be linked to the mentioned attributes of the products. The filtering

principle enables reviews’ filtering through consumer using review features and attributes.

(ii)TripAdvisor’s practices that enhance its appeal

TripAdvisor takes the leading role in the industry due to the unique ways it employs

to appeal to reviews’ writers. TripAdvisor has provided the best platform for the reviews’

writers to share their thoughts and opinions of people. It has appealed to clients by being a

leader in promoting the democratic concept (Gupta & Herman 2011). TripAdvisor does more

to boost the level of its appeal by appealing to the ego of review writers. This encourages

them to write several reviews.

TripAdvisor can drive reviews. This accounts for what has made it the market leader

through content. It has over fifty million opinions and reviews. It appeals by immediately

sending email to the reviewer letting him know when a review is read by 100 people (Liu,

Karahanna & Watson, 2011). The reviewers get periodic updates from TripAdvisor

informing them about the number of individuals who have read their review library (Banerjee

& Chua, 2016). People are encouraged to write reviews because they feel the site make their

voices heard both in the US and globally.

TripAdvisor appeal to the reviewers’ ego by providing demographics of the readers of

a review. TripAdvisor further does an excellent work of encouraging people to write reviews

through a display of badges which further appeal to the reviewers’ ego. These badges are

ranked regarding the number of reviews. The ranking includes reviewer (3-5), senior

reviewer (6-10), contributor (11-20), senior contributor (21-49) and top contributor (50+).

The badges have been great virtual rewards thereby incentivizing the consumers. Through the

badges, TripAdvisor has managed to achieve the desired reviewers’ actions. TripAdvisor
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sends email to the consumers to write review and offer them free nights or some discounts

when they write certain amount of review on the site.

TripAdvisor also appeals to its consumers by connecting the Hotel and the reviewers

directly. Hotels respond to reviews and thank them for taking their valuable time to share

their respective thoughts (Li and Bernoff, 201). The review writers always feel good when

that happens. TripAdvisor thus gets approval and acceptance by consumers. This is because

consumers feel the system works efficiently from the review site platform through the hotel

and to the community (Banerjee & Chua, 2016).

WHY CONSUMERS SPEND THEIR VALUABLE TIME TO WRITE REVIEWS?

(i) Theoretical Understanding of Consumers’ Motivations for Review Creation

Four goals (ultimate and intermediate) have been identified as the driving forces

behind consumers spending valuable time writing reviews. According to Liu et al. (2011),

online customer review is a significant kind of user-generated content, via which consumers

share services and products’ experience. The aim is to assist another customer in making

informed buying decisions (Banerjee & Chua, 2016).

The two ultimate goals include: (i) helping consumers make perfect choices and (ii)

decreasing the cognitive costs incurred in making choices. The intermediate goals are: (i)

assisting consumers with the possible unbiased product understanding; and (ii) constructing

efficient evaluative criteria set (Liu, Karahanna & Watson, 2011).

The consumer reviews are increasingly becoming significant characteristics of various

retail websites. TripAdvisor is using reviews to attract traffic capable of generating revenue

through advertising. Consumers further depend on others to advise them to choose services

and products. The motivation behind the reviews is to inform opinions (Kladou & Mavragani,

2015).
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The reviewers are aware that a considerable proportion of shoppers regard customer

ratings alongside reviews as significant as they research and plan purchases. For this reason,

many reviewers are motivated to shape the opinion of consumers by sharing their experiences

about the services and products to help them make rational choices (Liu, Karahanna &

Watson, 2011). The consumers have thus benefited from these reviews because they are more

likely to buy from a site with product ratings and reviews.

Therefore, the reviewers would want to help the consumers by communicating

information about the quality of the product. The reviewers know that such information is

helpful to consumers to avoid cost (cognitive or physical) that would otherwise be incurred in

identifying products that fit their preferences. The former one represents the required time to

get essential information to make choices (Filieri, Alguezaui & McLeay, 2015). The latter

denotes the cost involved in thinking about and making sense of the gathered information.

The reviewers are also aware that consumers will consult their reviews to make better

choices. This includes whether to purchase a product or determine the best product among the

alternatives (Liu, Karahanna & Watson, 2011). The reviewers are, therefore motivated to post

their reviews expecting their reviews to be among those samples consumers will to

understand the products (Filieri, Alguezaui & McLeay, 2015).

Thus, reviewers are driven to write their reviews to help customers update their

evaluative criteria. This is because they are aware that customers lack clear-cut criteria for

evaluating products before reading a sample of reviews (Liu, Karahanna & Watson, 2011).

Thus, the reviews will help the customers to establish vital aspects of the products. In so

doing, reviewers aim at supporting the customers to construct effective evaluative criteria

(Filieri, Alguezaui & McLeay, 2015).

(ii) Motivations for review creation specific to the consumers of TripAdvisor

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TripAdvisor users write reviews because they want to share a good experience with

the travelers. For this reason, reviews are created to help the consumers plan effective trips.

Also, the majority of the TripAdvisor’s consumers want a single place where they get to read

the review to enable them to compare prices and book (Berthon, Pitt & Campbell, 2008).

Users also write reviews because they have received better advice from reviews.

Therefore, they want to give back to their community by ensuring recency and adequate

quantity of reviews (Filieri, Alguezaui & McLeay, 2015). This is because they want to help

travelers know that whatever they read is updated. Therefore, reviewers create many reviews

to assist consumers informing the general sense of opinion of the people. The reviewer is

aware that the TripAdvisor global consumers will often reference the site reviews before

deciding whether or not to book a hotel (Filieri, Alguezaui & McLeay, 2015). For this reason,

they are inspired to create reviews as a way to remit to the community through time and cost

reduction.

The majority of the global users of the TripAdvisor will never book a hotel without

reviews. Therefore, people are motivated to create reviews to help consumers rationally book

hotels. This is because they are conscious that global TripAdvisor consumers will always first

read the reviews when planning and booking hotels. This is because the TripAdvisor users

will continuously read a minimum of between six and twelve reviews before booking the

hotel. They want to create accurate reviews of the real experience.

CONCLUSION

UGC has radically altered the way consumers search for information and make

rational decisions regarding commodities. This paper has presented a detailed discussion that

affirms that TripAdvisor remains the leading pioneer in the creation of UGC-based travel site.

REFERENCES
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Banerjee, S., & Chua, A. Y. (2016). In search of patterns among travelers' hotel ratings in

TripAdvisor. Tourism Management, 53, 125-131.

Berthon, P., Pitt, L., & Campbell, C. (2008). Adlib: When customers create the ad. California

Management Review, 50(4), pp. 6-30.

Filieri, R., Alguezaui, S., & McLeay, F. (2015). Why do travelers trust TripAdvisor?

Antecedents of trust towards consumer-generated media and its influence on

recommendation adoption and word of mouth. Tourism Management, 51, 174-185.

Gupta, S., & Herman, K. (2011). TripAdvisor.

Kladou, S., & Mavragani, E. (2015). Assessing destination image: An online marketing

approach and the case of TripAdvisor. Journal of Destination Marketing &

Management, 4(3), 187-193.

Li, C. and Bernoff, J. 2011. Chapter 3, The social technographics profile, Groundswell, pp.

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Liu, Q. B., Karahanna, E., & Watson, R. T. (2011). Unveiling user-generated content:

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