The use of online social networks as a promotional tool for self-administered internet surveys

This paper presents the results of a research carried out in Spain to obtain information about online consumer behavior in the tourism sector, employing a survey conducted through the Internet. Researches carried out through the Internet frequently use volunteers instead of the random and equiprobable selection used in other surveys, which means that the possibilities of generalizing the results are limited. In order to try to reduce this problem as much as possible, it is usual to conduct extensive promotional campaigns of online surveys using banners and mailing lists, and offering incentives to participants. This paper also uses an online communication tool that is becoming increasingly important: online social networks. All these tools have been used in the promotion of the survey, which has allowed us to obtain a number of replies that considerably increases the representativeness of the sample.