Measuring customer social participation in online travel communities Scale development and validation

Purpose - The purpose of this paper is to develop and validate a scale to measure customer social participation in brand communities, specifically e-travel companies' communities. Design/methodology/approach - A qualitative research has been undertaken to generate a pool of items. Based on Churchill's (1979) scale development process, numerous reliability and validity tests have been conducted to confirm the scale structure. Data were collected through online and field surveys from the students and hotel guests who have either subscribed, liked or joined any e-travel service companies' community brand page using any social networking site or have ever posted or considered reviews and ratings of any e-travel service companies via their official site or via a mobile app while planning their travel. Findings - The findings depict nine items on a three-dimensional scale for measuring customer participation in travel brand communities created on social networking sites. Research limitations/implications - The findings provide important implications for hotel and travel managers and are likely to encourage future studies in the field of social media and travel brand communities. Originality/value - This paper contributes to the literature by providing refinement to the distinct operationalization and conceptualization of customer online participation, specifically in social media-based travel brand communities. This paper is the first to develop a multidimensional scale of customer social participation in e-travel companies' communities. This is a new addition to existing literature, as the majority of empirical studies in this field are from participation other than customer social participation and contexts different frome-travel companies.