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.