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Believe it or not: Credibility of blogs in tourism

School of Business and Economics, College of Charleston, mackr{at}cofc.edu, University of Georgia

Julia E. Blose

Department of Marketing and Supply Chain Management at the College of Charleston, Florida State University

Bing Pan

Department of Hospitality and Tourism Management at the College of Charleston, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

This study examines the use of blogs as a means of tourism marketing communication. Using a scenario-based approach, an online experiment was conducted to test whether consumers perceive corporate and personal blogs to be credible sources of information and to compare the perceived credibility of blogs to that of traditional word-of-mouth. The findings suggest that while consumers do not generally equate the overall credibility of blogs with that of traditional word-of-mouth, some consumers do appear to attribute similar levels of authoritativeness, a dimension of credibility, to them.

Key Words: blogs • marketing communications • perceived credibility • tourism

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