Are Recommendations of Venturers Valuable? – a Study of Word-Of-Mouth Communication Behavior of Variety-Seeking Tourists and Opinion Leaders

Word-of-mouth communication is generally seen as particularly influential in consumer de-cision making. Most research is focused on the following questions. Do people give recom-mendations? How many people give recommendations? How often do they give recommen-dations? However, service providers need to know whose recommendations are more valu-able for them. These people must be identified and encouraged to word-of-mouth communi-cation. Therefore it is necessary to segment customers according to their influence on others. Recommendations of opinion leaders are assumed to be particularly influential. The results of our empirical study indicate that venturers are often opinion leaders at the same time.

Citation:

Herbert Woratschek and Chris Horbel (2005) ,"Are Recommendations of Venturers Valuable? – a Study of Word-Of-Mouth Communication Behavior of Variety-Seeking Tourists and Opinion Leaders", in E - European Advances in Consumer Research Volume 7, eds. Karin M. Ekstrom and Helene Brembeck, Goteborg, Sweden : Association for Consumer Research, Pages: 469-470.