This document provides a research proposal that examines the impact of Web 2.0 on consumer search behavior and purchase intentions. Specifically, it will study how user reviews and comments on sites like Hotels.com influence consumers' search processes and decisions. The proposal outlines the purpose, topic rationale, research questions, objectives, methodology, and literature review. If approved, the research will involve surveys and interviews to understand how information found on Hotels.com affects consumer trust and subsequent online purchasing.

1. RESEARCH PROPOSAL
Lecture:
Name Of Students : Rupali Dhanda (Student ID :200775816 )
Course Detail : MBM
Contact Details :
 Bridget Hudghes : Bridge1hughes@yahoo.com
07920141112
Flat 201 d, 4 Blackfriars road,
Glagow G1 1QP
 Rupali Dhanda : Rupali.dhanda@gmail.com
07988898621
1-4 Parsonage row, High Street,
Glasgow G11PU
Project Title :
“The Impact of Web 2.0 on Consumer Search behaviour and the affect
on their purchase intensions”
Submitted : June 2008

2. PURPOSE:
The dissertation is aimed at: Understanding the effect of web 2.0 on consumers when making
search decisions, what impact the comments, information and reviews available on websites are
having on consumer search behaviour and by the use of consumer theories we would attempt to
understand better the relationship between intentions to use the Internet both for information search
and purchasing. Another goal is to examine the respective roles of consumer attitude related to trust
content in predicting both Internet searching and purchasing intentions. Specifically we would be
looking at (Content) Communities category in web 2.0 using hotels.com for our case study.
REASON FOR CHOOSING THE TOPIC:
Several reasons led to the proposal of this topic for our dissertation. Firstly The rise in the
popularity of web 2.0 applications for e.g.hotel.com,youtube.com, flicker etc and the spread of
internet as a platform for almost everything and anything over the past few years, and our
experiences in using these sites lead to our interest in understanding what exactly web 2.0 is and its
various applications that are available to us. How do these sites enable users to interact?
The fact that millions of people are logging on to sites like hotel.com, Face book , Flickr, YouTube
and Wikipedia, blogging etc, Consumer demand for such internet enabled services and products is
strong and the numbers are growing. Basically tickling us to understand various aspects of web 2.0
emphasizing more on the information availability on our case: hotels.com and thus to analyse
whether these sites provide reliable information to facilitate the consumer information search
process.
By this we want to know if the growth was simply leading the way (and leading the hype), or has
something more significant occurred? How the broad populace of "connected consumers" discover
things? how do they trust the information on these ? What drives consumers’ desire to purchase (or
not) online?
Finally, An important aspect of consumer behaviour in electronic environments is the search habits
consumers adopt when gathering information before making a purchase decision. We argue that
information search may be the single most important functional element leading to purchase via the
Internet.(reference to back it up) If search intentions play a central role in predicting future
purchasing intention, search attitudes could be a valuable research tool for predicting the
probability of consumer purchasing on the Web. Such a finding would also suggest that any

3. decision not to buy while shopping on the Web is largely the consequence of variety of factors one
being the trust content how much effect does this have on the two aspects. Very little research has
been conducted within this area and therefore we thought that there is a need to explore the link
between consumer search behaviour and content trust and how all of this affects the purchase
intensions.
Research Questions
1. Do open web sources such as social networking sites, reputation sites: web1.0(blogs), web 2.0
(sites like hotels.com)provide reliable information to facilitate the consumer Information search
process?
2. How much trust (content trust) do users place in open web sources? Are there certain factors that
drive/influence/effect content trust'?
3. Can content trust be measured? If any, how can the above mentioned 'determining factors of
content trust' be combined into an overall 'content trust value'
4. How and to what extent does the trust at information search phase affect the consumer purchase
decision of a product or a service online e.g at amazon.com.
Learning Objectives
The objective of the study is to investigate how much effect information on Hotels.com have on
consumers search behaviour which is a prerequisite of consumers decision making process and to
analyse the importance of content trust of consumers and its effect on the purchase intentions. The
findings could be useful to marketers in understanding the power of web 2.0 as a direct marketing
tool.
1. In Uk market ,what is the penetration rate of web 2.0 and what age group uses such
application and to what extent do they trust?
2. What is the extent of spread of using web 2.0 in our targeted customer age group (15 – 35)
3. Once consumers are aware of the reliability and trust of these open sources, will they
continue to make use of them? If yes, how much will it affect the growth of such sources?

4. 4. Does the trust of these sources depend on the type of product or service?
5. What determines the popularity of these sites? Is this popularity the reason why consumers
should use such sources and if they should trust it?
6. Compare to traditional outlets such as t.v, books, magazines etc, how important do
consumers hold information on line?
7. we want to learn whether consumers actually believe that the user generated content can be
a reliable source of information in deciding what product or service to purchase
8. If this new technology called web 2.0 actually aids consumers search process has an effect
on consumer’s intentions to purchase.
Theories and Concepts to be used.
Theories of consumer behaviour
Theories of information search behaviour
Theories of purchase intentions
Classification of Web 2.0
Principles of web 2.0
(we are working on it, still more to be read about and mentioned)

5. RESEARCH METHODOLOGY:
Target customers: Web based consumers those who might get influenced by the information
available on the website: hotels.com and would have an impact on their purchase intentions. We
intend to analyze and target them by both quantitative and qualitative methods.
Quantitative method would involve survey and questionnaires sample size of 100, which would
help us narrow down our target consumers and then we intend to use qualitative method of
interviewing our sample chosen of the total surveyed. We intend to get an in debt information on
their behaviour and factors that cause the purchase intentions.
We intend to use secondary data like articles online and available journals, books, information
available on hotels.com and other related blog sites.
Literature review
Journals :
 Journal of advertising research December 2007 volume 47,no.4
Editorial:
398 Word of mouth research:principles and application
387 Reconsidering model of influencingLthe relationship between consumer social networks and
wom effectiveness
436 Word of mouth impact on the web: the impact of web 2.0 on consumer purchase decisions
472 Bloggers motivation and behaviours:a model
485 The influence of eWOM on virtual consumer communities
 Title:Participative web and user-created content : web 2.0, wikis and social networking /
[Graham Vickery, Sacha Wunsch-Vincent].

6. Publication Details:[Paris] : Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development,
2007.Description:124 p. : ill. ; 23 cm.
Available at
http://puck.sourceoecd.org/vl=25049586/cl=20/nw=1/rpsv/ij/oecdthemes/99980134/v2007n1
5/s1/p1l
 Author:Scoble, Robert,
Title:Naked conversations : how blogs are changing the way businesses talk with customers /
Robert Scoble and Shel Israel.
Publication Details:Hoboken, N.J. : John Wiley, c2006.
Description:x, 251 p. ; 24 cm.
 Science & Information Technology
2007, vol. 2007, no. 15, pp. 1 - 128
Participative Web and User-Created Content: Web 2.0, Wikis and Social Networking
 REPORT by Morghan and stanely
Available at:
http://www.morganstanley.com/institutional/techresearch/pdfs/web2.0.pdf
 Deutch, M. (1960). The effect of motivational orientation upon trust and suspicion. Human
Relations, 13, 122-139.
 Suleiman, R. and Rapoport, A. (1992). Provision of step level public goods with continuous
contribution. Journal of Behavioral Decision Making, 5. 133-153.

7. BIBLIOGRAPHY:
 Journal of advertising research December 2007 volume 47,no.4
Editorial:
398 Word of mouth research:principles and application
387 Reconsidering model of influencingLthe relationship between consumer social networks
and wom effectiveness
436 Word of mouth impact on the web: the impact of web 2.0 on consumer purchase decisions
472 Bloggers motivation and behaviours:a model
485 The influence of eWOM on virtual consumer communities
 Title:Participative web and user-created content : web 2.0, wikis and social networking /
[Graham Vickery, Sacha Wunsch-Vincent].
Publication Details:[Paris] : Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development,
2007.Description:124 p. : ill. ; 23 cm.
Available at
http://puck.sourceoecd.org/vl=25049586/cl=20/nw=1/rpsv/ij/oecdthemes/99980134/v2007n15/s
1/p1l
 Author:Scoble, Robert,
Title:Naked conversations : how blogs are changing the way businesses talk with customers /
Robert Scoble and Shel Israel.
Publication Details:Hoboken, N.J. : John Wiley, c2006.
Description:x, 251 p. ; 24 cm.
 Science & Information Technology
2007, vol. 2007, no. 15, pp. 1 - 128
Participative Web and User-Created Content: Web 2.0, Wikis and Social Networking
 REPORT by Morghan and stanely
Available at:
http://www.morganstanley.com/institutional/techresearch/pdfs/web2.0.pdf

8.  http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/facebook_mainstream_everything.php#more
 http://www.avenuea-razorfish.com/reports/DigConsStudy.pdf
 http://www.vinnylingham.com/search-behaviour-research-update-ses-london-2006-
session.html
 http://www.emeraldinsight.com/Insight/viewContentItem.do?
contentType=Article&contentId=863754
 http://www.tengoldenrules.com/web20.htm
 http://www.tamingthebeast.net/articles6/web2-mashups-social-network.htm
 http://epubl.ltu.se/1404-5508/2003/154/LTU-SHU-EX-03154-SE.pdf
 http://www.palgrave-
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4C546BA989
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 http://informationr.net/ir/12-4/paper324.html
 http://jbao.atu.edu/Spring2006/HadjiphanisChristouRoleECommerceLoizosJBAOSpring2006
.pdf
 http://www.springerlink.com/content/g527315w5x514564/
 http://www.accessmylibrary.com/coms2/summary_0286-10254064_ITM
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 http://emeraldinsight.com/Insight/ViewContentServlet?
Filename=/published/emeraldfulltextarticle/pdf/0291070102_ref.html
 http://jib.debii.curtin.edu.au/iss03_mafe.pdf

9.  http://www.palgrave-journals.com/ejis/journal/v12/n1/full/3000445a.html
Understanding online purchase intentions: contributions from technology and trust
perspectives
 http://csdl2.computer.org/comp/proceedings/hicss/2008/3075/00/30750138.pdf
Relationship between Uncertainty and Patterns of Pre-purchase Consumer Search in
Electronic Markets

10.  http://www.palgrave-journals.com/ejis/journal/v12/n1/full/3000445a.html
Understanding online purchase intentions: contributions from technology and trust
perspectives
 http://csdl2.computer.org/comp/proceedings/hicss/2008/3075/00/30750138.pdf
Relationship between Uncertainty and Patterns of Pre-purchase Consumer Search in
Electronic Markets