Application of rough set and netnography in tourism marketing analysis

Purpose Social media has given customers more power over sharing their knowledge, opinions and experiences with each other. Tourists as customers of destinations are also using text ads on social media and websites to share their experiences. The purpose of this study is to find out the factors whic...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Journal of modelling in management 2018-11, Vol.13 (4), p.1025-1036
Main Authors: Sajjadian, Fatemeh, Sheikh, Reza, Souri, Mohammad Ehsan, Sana, Shib Sankar
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Advertising
Approximation
Business communications
Consumer behavior
Consumers
Decision making
Ethnography
Focus groups
Internet
Marketing
Netnography
Qualitative research
Quality of service
Research methodology
Set theory
Social networks
Supply chains
Tourism
Travel
User generated content
Web 2.0
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Summary:Purpose Social media has given customers more power over sharing their knowledge, opinions and experiences with each other. Tourists as customers of destinations are also using text ads on social media and websites to share their experiences. The purpose of this study is to find out the factors which have affect on the decisions of tourists towards the most popular destinations in Tehran, Isfahan and Shiraz of Iran. Design/methodology/approach Netnography methodology has been applied to 2,852 comments showing travelers’ experiences through TripAdvisor.com. As a result, ten major factors have been discovered. According to these factors, a questionnaire has been designed and distributed among 449 tourists. In the second step, the collected data are used by rough set theory to discover the rules of destination recommendation based on the factors discovered before. Finally, eight main rules are determined to further analysis. Findings The findings confirm that beauty, cultural attractions, safety, welfare, costs and dealing with passengers are more important than other observed dimensions. Originality/value In this study, first the factors affecting consumer behavior in the tourism industry have been investigated. Based on this, the comments of tourists who have traveled to one of the cities Shiraz, Isfahan or Teheran and shared their experiences on TripAdvisor.com are studied. Further, the rules are discovered based on the rough set theory, and owing to the large number of objects (449 customer), the Rosetta software has been used.
ISSN:1746-5664
1746-5672
DOI:10.1108/JM2-02-2018-0029