TURKISH TOURISM CONSUMER’S INFORMATION SEARCH BEHAVIOR: THE ROLE OF USER-GENERATED CONTENT IN TRAVEL PLANNING PROCESS

Consumer’s decision-making process has been altered by dissemination of social networking sites (SNSs) provided by Web 2.0 technologies. Communication and interaction among consumers in SNSs allow consumers share their opinions and view others’ opinions in their networks. The emergence of sites has highlighted the significance of electronic word-of-mouth since user-generated content (UGC) has become a source of information for consumers searching for information on products and services. UGC plays an important role in travel planning of prospective travelers, especially in information search phase. In this study, after a review of the relevant literature, the researcher aims to investigate how user-generated content are used and perceived by tourism consumers during decision making process and the role of user-generated content as a source of travel information. To achieve a better understanding about how the user-generated content was used and perceived by tourism consumers during their travel-related information search and more widely travel planning process, an exploratory study was designed based on the results of previous studies. The results of a survey conducted online suggest that tourism consumers benefit from information provided by different forms of user-generated content in their information search during the first stages of their travel planning process mainly.