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without commercial interest that are used by other consumers in their information search
and decision making process. Sweeney, Soutar and Mazzarol (2008) noted how blogs have
gained much credibility in the eyes of the consumer as a relevant and unbiased input into their
decision making process. Blogging reality is entering tourism as a tool widely used to read and
write reviews on accommodation and travel services (Munar 2009: 27). Blogs are seen as being
particularly important for travel where bloggers are often seen as authorities or experts and are
more infl uential among their own regular readers and casual surfers lead to their blogs by more
effi cient search engines (O'Connor, Wang and Li 2011). Travel blogs as one of the attributes
of a virtual travel community represent the experiences of travellers that are easily accessible
as research data. Destinations should acknowledge that travellers in this networked world
are expected to increasingly take advantage or contribute to consumer-generated content
sharing experiences or advice with others across the Internet's global community which greatly
empowers the consumers and forces travel product suppliers to strive for excellence (Jamal and
Robinson 2009).
This chapter focusses on virtual travel communities and the blogging phenomenon and their
marketing implications.Virtual communities and blogs are platforms for word-of-mouth commu-
nication and sources of information on tourist behaviour and experiences which may affect
consumer decisions and tourist behaviour. A general overview on virtual communities starts off
the chapter, followed by a discussion on virtual travel communities and its characteristics. Travel
blogs as records of travel experiences are highlighted as tourist practices and have become
part of tourist experiences. Lastly, the theoretical and marketing implications of travel blogs
are outlined.
Virtual communities
Virtual community (VC) is a new form of communication whereby community members share
information and knowledge for mutual learning or problem solving (Lechner and Hummel
2002). It is also referred to as community networks and online community which has become a
broad term to describe any collection of people who communicate online (Wang, Yu and
Fesenmaier 2002). For Fernback and Thompson (1995), it is a set of social relationships
forged in cyberspace through repeated contacts within a specifi ed boundary. A VC has the
following characteristics (Balasubramanian and Mahajan 2001):
1 aggregation of people;
2 rational members;
3 interaction in cyberspace without physical collocation;
4 process of social exchange; and
5 an objective, property/identity or interests shared by members.
Koh and Kim (2004) simply defi ne a virtual community to be a group of people with common
interests or goals, interacting predominantly in cyberspace. Similarly, Dholakia and Bagozzi
(2004) also recognized these communities as consumer groups of varying sizes that connect and
interact online for the purpose of meeting personal and shared goals.
Koh and Kim (2004) posited that there is 'a sense of community' in a virtual community. A
sense of community refers to an individual's feeling of relationship to a community or personal
knowledge about belonging to a collective that includes others (Heller, Price, Reinharz, Riger,
Wandersman and D'Aunno 1984; Newbrough and Chavis 1986). Wang et al . (2002) argued that
VC is not an entity but rather a process defi ned by its members and that it possesses many
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