The factors of social media and online content affecting foreign travelers’ decision making process to visit Thailand

Abstract

The purpose of this study was to examine the factors including social media, electronic word-of-mouth, perceived ease-of-use, perceived usefulness, information credibility and destination image of Thailand affecting foreign travelers’ decision making process to visit Thailand. Total samples of 400 respondents collected with survey questionnaire by using the concept of judgement sampling, selecting respondents who usually read the online travel content in social media. The data sets utilized descriptive statistics and multiple regression analysis. The researcher found that most of 400 foreigner respondents were females Singaporean and Chinese people, with age between 18-25 years old. Almost of them were single and the majority of the population had bachelor degree, which were studying and working in state enterprise. The largest group of income range was between 1,501-3,000 USD per month. Most of them are traveling once a year, with a length of trip about one week and plan a trip by themselves. The top three traveling purposes were family vacation, adventure and spiritual. Moreover, most of respondents spent money on traveling aboard about 501-1,000 USD per each travel. The top three social medias that use in daily life were Instagram, Facebook and Youtube. The most top three sources that use for searching travel information were online travel site, friends or family and travel blog. Whereas, Facebook was indicated to be the most affecting on travel destination in decision making process. Most of them were sometimes use online travel sites. Furthermore, the result shown that electronic word-of-mouth (β = 0.437), destination image of Thailand (β = 0.272) and information credibility (β = 0.230) accounted for 62.3% positively impact decision making process of foreign travelers to visit Thailand with statistical significant at 0.05.