Consumer Online Engagement: An Exploration of the use of Mafengwo.com for High Involvement Decision Making of Chinese Tourists

Abstract

Consumer online engagement plays an important role in the tourism industry. Social media engagement platforms provide travellers more opportunities to search for information and engaging with others in an online environment. This research investigates the engagement practices of Chinese consumers utilising social media as part of their decision-making journey. The online travel platform, Mafengwo, was utilised to explore the consumer online engagement. As a three-phase study, a mixed-method research approach involved the collection of qualitative data. Netnography was used in the first two phases of to explore thirty members’ engagement practices and their inter-relationships on Mafengwo. Semi-structured interviews were conducted in the third phase to explore how and why consumers used Mafengwo in their decision-making process of buying European travel packages. Eleven engagement practices were found from the online observation and thematic analysis. The results showed the objects of consumer-to-consumer (C2C) online engagement, the types of engagement practices, the inter-relationships of online engagement practices, and the antecedents and consequences of C2C engagement. Based on the thematic analysis of the threephase study, a conceptual model showing the relationships between consumer high involvement, online C2C engagement and the consumer decision-making process is developed. This study provides the first steps in understanding the role that consumer online engagement and the social media platform play in consumers’ high-involved purchase decision-making stages, within a tourism context. This thesis offers some theoretical and practical implications for academia and travel-related practitioners, travel providers and marketing managers, who are involved in the tourism industry and online travel engagement platforms.