Interactivity: The Concept and Its Dimensions

Importance of the Chapter

Despite the increasing importance of weblogs in the Tourism Industry, academic studies pertaining to travel weblogs remain sparse. Among the relatively few studies, Douglas & Mills (2006) investigate nearly 350 weblog entries from the travel weblog site ‘travelpod.com’. Their study identifies the perceived brand images of travel webloggers across the Middle East and North Africa. Another case study conducted by Lin & Huang (2006), analyses Tourism-marketing responses. Pan et al., (2007) qualitatively analyse the opinions posted on leading travel weblogs. Their research finding ascertains how webloggers communicate about their travel experiences.

Although the research interest in the subject has recently increased in popularity, many studies centre on depicting the weblogging phenomena. Interaction intention is an important issue in relation to corporate travel weblog studies. The concept of interactivity has increasingly received considerable scholarly attention across different academic disciplines. For instance, the vast majority of interactivity literatures resides in the field of Computer-Mediated Communication (CMC), Electronic Commerce (EC), Information Technology (IT) and Web-based education (e.g., distance learning).

While a plethora of literature on testifying the significance of the term ‘interactivity’, no consensus has been reached on probing the nature or content of its dimensions (Lee, 2005). Scholars propose different views which attribute to certain characteristics, from an experimental and conceptual manner (Levinson, 2010; Karimova, 2011).

Owing to the complexities and popularity of the concept, an explicit investigation of the dimensionality of interactivity construct has yet to be successfully addressed. Furthermore, no attempt has been made to extend the constructs of interactivity into a corporate weblogging environment. In this instance, this chapter is expected to provide an opportunity to broaden the contexts in which interactivity has been studied.

As stated earlier, interactivity can be one of the key functions on a corporate travel weblog site to build a positive virtual relationship between travel companies and weblog users (Pan et al., 2007). Importantly, interactivity is viewed as a central characteristic of weblogs and can have a positive impact on the attitude toward the weblog site (Levinson, 2010). Nevertheless, extant researchers in corporate weblog marketing have yet to comprehensively study the significance of interactivity functions in weblogging environment.

Given these gaps in our knowledge, it is critical to realise the multidimensional nature of interactivity particularly their relative effectiveness within a corporate weblogging setting. In brief, it is important for researchers to understand how people use interactive functions on corporate travel weblogs and how interactivity may influence attitudes toward a corporate travel weblog and towards prospective behavioural intentions.