Methodology
Data collection
The study utilized a pseudo hotel brand “Star Hill” and the “Star Hill” hotel Facebook page on Facebook.com. Messages posted on Star Hill hotel Facebook pages were replicated from real messages used on real hotel Facebook pages. One message was posted on “Star Hill” hotel Facebook page per day between April 2, 2012 and April 11, 2012, so the hotel Facebook page had a total of ten messages. The pseudo hotel Facebook page is shown in Figure 1. Although the use of a hypothetical Facebook page may decrease realism, it was utilized to remove the impact of a well-known hotel brand or past experience with the hotel on the study results. Moreover, the Facebook pages were based on actual hotel Facebook pages and accessed on Facebook. Respondents were
instructed to use the Web page just like they would on Facebook.
Then, an online survey was conducted in April 2012 to collect data. Participants were recruited from a panel database provided by a US online research company. All the participants were frequent Facebook users and were at least 18 years old. Qualified participants were invited to participate in the online survey via a link contained in the e-mail. The participants were led to the pseudo hotel Facebook page and were given enough time to browse through the Facebook page and also do any activity they wanted such as like, comment or share. After reading the hotel Facebook page, all the participants were requested to complete a questionnaire. The final sample of the study
included 450 respondents.