Luiz Mendes Fiho to present to Internet Research Group at AUT

 

PhD student Luiz Mendes Fiho will present on:

 
"User-Generated Content and consumer empowerment in the travel industry"?

 

ABSTRACT
User-Generated Content (UGC) on the World Wide Web has empowered travellers, enabling them to exchange opinions or experiences with others, and consequently, influencing their travel decisions. Travellers are able to make comments in a large variety of forms such as photos, videos, podcasts, ratings, reviews, articles and blogs. When people use the Internet to obtain travel information, they do research about the trip on the Internet, read and generate content and reviews, and interact with other travellers in social networks. This is empowering tourists by giving them the opportunity to receive and pass on recommendations of their travel experiences. Despite the importance of UGC in the travel industry, our understanding of how UGC empowers online consumer remains limited.By employing the Uses & Gratifications and Dual-Process Theories, we propose that Consumer Empowerment in the context of UGC can be formed through Content Empowerment, Social Empowerment and Process Empowerment.

BIOGRAPHY
Luiz is currently enrolled in a PhD at AUT, and also works as Editorial Assistant for the Journal of Global Information Management. His research has attracted a government-funded Top Achievers Doctoral Scholarship. He was previously a lecturer at FARN University (Brazil). Luiz has served as Associate Editor for FARN Journal, session chair and reviewer in several international conferences. He has published 40 papers in his academic career so far. These publications include 4 book chapters, 7 articles in Brazilian Journals and several papers at international and Brazilian conferences.

 

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