Word-of-Mouth Segments: Online, Offline, Visual or Verbal?

Most tourists love to share their holiday experiences with family, friends, and, increasingly, strangers, using the Internet. Such word-of-mouth represents a highly influential information source for potential tourists and is therefore of great interest to tourism marketing managers. This study aims to understand patterns among tourists when sharing holiday experiences, both in terms of the communication channel they use and the kind of content they share. The findings contribute to a theoretical understanding of word-of-mouth behavior by empirically showing that word-of-mouth is not a homogeneous activity. Rather, results show that distinct segments of word-of-mouth behavior exist. Segments differ with regard to content shared (visual/verbal) and channel used (offline/online). Two out of the five segments use only offline channels to share their experiences, and the extent of visual content shared varies across segments. The article illustrates how these findings could be translated into proactive marketing action aimed at instigating word-of-mouth behavior.