How Word-of-mouth Moderates Room Price and Hotel Stars for Online Hotel Booking an Empirical Investigation with Expedia Data [Summary]

Information cues about products influence consumer purchase decisions. Online review can enhance communication among consumers while affecting consumer perception by increasing awareness and reducing uncertainty. However, little is known on how Word-of-Mouth (WOM) and information cues interact, especially on experience goods like hotel rooms. To bridge this gap, we analyze data collected from Expeida.com and use actual booking numbers to measure sales performance instead of proxy approaches employed by previous researchers. This research investigates the negative effect of WOM on information cues, namely room price and hotel star rating, to hotel online sales performance.