Setting the Future of Digital and Social Media Marketing Research: Perspectives and Research Propositions

in pressThe use of the internet and social media have changed consumer behavior and the ways in which companies conduct their business. Social and digital marketing offers significant opportunities to organizations through lower costs, improved brand awareness and increased sales. However, significant challenges exist from negative electronic word-of-mouth as well as intrusive and irritating online brand presence. This article brings together the collective insight from several leading experts on issues relating to digital and social media marketing. The experts' perspectives offer a detailed narrative on key aspects of this important topic as well as perspectives on more specific issues including artificial intelligence, augmented reality marketing, digital content management, mobile marketing and advertising, B2B marketing, electronic word of mouth and ethical issues therein. This research offers a significant and timely contribution to both researchers and practitioners in the form of challenges and opportunities where we highlight the limitations within the current research, outline the research gaps and develop the questions and propositions that can help advance knowledge within the domain of digital and social marketing.Peer reviewe

Smart Tourism Intermingling with Indian Spiritual Destinations: Role of e-WoM Sentiments in marketing

The purpose of this study is to see how smart tourism and sentiments help tourists seeking spiritual experiences that are deep-rooted in ancient Indian traditions as opposed to materialistic getaways. Exploratory research through sentiments of YouTube and Tweets followers are collected in sample. A qualitative-quantitative research method is used in this paper to analyse the sentiments on Indian popular spiritual destinations. Smart tourism allows larger, coordinated efforts for Innovation, quality of life and sustainable tourism through rich data infrastructure within the ambit of specific destinations. Within a context, personalisation and real-time monitoring can occur where sentiments are positive or highly positive for that matter. Fundamental to tourists’ experiences is an aesthetic obsession with authenticity. The diversity of smart technologies applicable to experiences in the smart spiritual tourism sphere is still to be defined on a more granular level where religion still holds the glue. This paper seeks to explore the smart tourism experience concept applied to spirituality (STES) in more depth to facilitate further contributions. A smart tourism experience can be co-created for better delivery and a conducive environment for such an experience to emerge. Each spiritual destination is unique and complex. Policy responses can address the impact mainly through knowledge (human) resources

The impact of influencers' visual content in social media on consumers' purchase intention: the case of SMEs restaurants in Saudi Arabia

The impact of information on consumers' purchase intentions has been known for quite some time. Ever since the idea of consulting family members and friends regarding their purchase, and with the evolution of the Tv and the Internet, consumers have reached a new level of access to products' related content. So they can be informed and evaluate purchases and share their experiences not only with people close to them but also with an endless number of current and potential consumers. Moreover, such a way of content sharing between people had primarily been formed in the verbal and textual form, more precisely verbally in face-to-face interaction and textually through the Internet, all to serve the purpose of informing other consumers about brands. Researchers have long acknowledged and investigated such a way of content exchanging under the well-known topics of word of mouth (WOM) and electronic word of mouth (eWOM) and their influence on consumers' purchase intentions. With the constant evolution of the Internet, a new communication channel has emerged known as social media platforms. A way of connecting with people worldwide so that they can reach each other all the time, regardless of any barriers. An area of interest that academics have found fascinating in investigating eWOM and its impact on consumers' choices. Such an exchange of words over social media applications can reshape consumers' intentions regarding their potential purchases. However, as we live in a world where technology evolution never stops, these social media applications have reached different and more exciting features, as users not only can interact verbally but now have the ability to interact visually via different online platforms. So the entire idea of eWOM has changed to a more advanced level, known as visual eWOM. Moreover, users of such applications can share brand-related content visually in the form of pictures and videos. A feature that makes platforms developers race against time to develop the best way to introduce new applications that make the best use of such a modern technological feature. So nowadays, we can see an endless number of social media applications that enable people to communicate visually. Nevertheless, there are few applications which have been tremendously popular. Instagram and Snapchat are two relatively recent platforms that can be mainly viewed to serve the visual exchange of content. Their popularity has reached almost most social media users worldwide. From such a perspective, the idea of exploring and investigating such visual content and how it influences consumers have become highly crucial. Not only due to how such content impacts consumers but also to how this content on social media applications can be spread among millions of people, as well as how brands can take advantage of such an excellent way of communication with current and potential consumers. An area of interest that this thesis aims to investigate. To do so, this research is built into two main phases; the first phase aims to explore the usage of social media among Saudi consumers and gather as much information as possible on their usage behaviour and the impact of social media influencers on their purchase behaviour. Through a survey of 512 Saudi consumers. The results show that Saudi consumers use social media at a very high rate, more precisely Instagram and Snapchat, and they follow and view social media influencers' content at a tremendously high percentage. However, when it comes to the impact of such content on consumers, the results indicate a low influence on consumers' purchase intentions regarding their restaurants' choices. The second phase of this thesis is to analyse content on social media applications. In detail, it examines the content, the source of the content (social media influencers), and consumers' behaviour toward the content. In order to reach such, a theoretical model was developed based on the integration of the Information Acceptance Model (IACM). The results highlighted that visual content quality, source credibility, source experience, content quantity, adoption of content, attitude toward content and subjective norms are the primary factors for visual eWOM in social media (Instagram and Snapchat) that influence consumers' purchase intentions. This thesis contributes to theoretical implications through its validated model and introduced vital findings. Moreover, the research model highlights a new approach to information adoption by expanding the IACM and introducing new insights to researchers. Future studies can consider the research model to investigate the visual content in social media and its influence on consumers' purchase intentions. Moreover, this study's results can help researchers consider other factors in studying the impact of such technology, such as employing the results to examine other social media applications that serve the visual feature, such as TikTok. Also, since this research was only conducted through a quantitative method, employing qualitative or mixed methods can be beneficial in providing a complete picture of visual eWOM influence. A further benefit of this study is how it considers the cultural character of Saudi consumers. Yet, other studies might find it worth considering other cultural factors or employing such findings in different countries. The same goes with considering different categories besides SMEs restaurants

Technology in tourism - from information communication technologies to eTourism and smart tourism towards ambient intelligence tourism: a perspective article

© 2019, Emerald Publishing Limited. Purpose: Technology revolutionises the tourism industry and determines the strategy and competitiveness of tourism organisations and destinations. This paper aims to explore the transformational and disruptive nature of technology for tourism. Design/methodology/approach: This paper is based on systematic research. Findings: Technology innovations bring the entire range of stakeholders together in tourism service ecosystems. Technology-empowered tourism experiences increasingly support travellers to co-create value throughout all stages of travel. Ambient Intelligence (AmI) Tourism (2020-future) is driven by a range of disruptive technologies. Inevitably smart environments transform industry structures, processes and practices, having disruptive impacts for service innovation, strategy, management, marketing and competitiveness of everybody involved. Originality/value: The paper synthesises developments in technology for tourism and proposes a future perspective

Determinants of influence in electronic word of mouth communication within Facebook

Word of mouth (WOM) communication is being magnified and amplified on a vast and unprecedented scale by free, easy to use technologies. Where once thoughts and experiences regarding products and brands were shared orally one-to-one or in small groups, WOM has been transformed by social media into electronic word of mouth communication (eWOM) with hundreds of friends and acquaintances. Consumers can now discuss and share their experiences with brands and products on social networking sites such as Facebook. Using the Elaboration Likelihood Model (ELM), this study identifies factors that affect the influence of eWOM in the Facebook News Feed. Argument strength, source expertise, tie strength and purchase decision involvement are identified as important variables in this study and their effect on attitude towards a product and intention to purchase a product are investigated. The study found that contrary to the expectations of the ELM, Facebook users were not using the strength of the argument contained in the eWOM to make judgements about their intention to purchase a product. Users were instead using the heuristic cue of source expertise to inform their purchase behaviour. Tie strength was also used as a heuristic cue to determine whether an eWOM message was worthy of their attention. This study adds to the literature regarding the influence mechanism of eWOM in Facebook and provides further insight for social media marketers

Progress on technology use in tourism

Purpose: With the rapid development and implementation of cutting-edge information technologies in tourism and hospitality, it is necessary to update the progress of technology use in the past 18 years and set up research agenda for future research. Adopting Information Systems (IS) as a reference discipline, this article aims to create a literature review of technology and tourism papers around the theme of use. Design/methodology/approach: Following the systematic literature review process of Aguinis et al. (2018), 314 papers were downloaded to determine how they applied the concept of technology use. Findings: Three themes about technology use emerged: types of processing, organisational use, and users. Among various types of technology processing, interactive and online are largely addressed in the tourism and hospitality literature. The organisational use theme explores how the competitive and strategic use of technology provides management support for organisations. There was a large amount of research focussed on direct users, such as individual characteristics, user attitudes, and user behaviour. The theories of TAM and UTAUT have been widely applied in these studies. Originality/value: This paper provides a review of key issues which has been discussed in tourism research in relation to technology use. By applying the scheme developed in the IS discipline, this study provides new insights into the development of technology in tourism. In addition, it also gives us the opportunity to suggest a research agenda by identifying research gaps and future research collaboration opportunities between these two fields