Destination Image on the DMO's Platforms: Official Website and Social Media

Tourists usually configure and develop ideas about possible destinations based on information previously gathered from both social media and the official web of the destination management organization (DMO). In spite of the relevance of said information sources, there have not been many studies evaluating how these different sources influence the destination image. This research proposes a model intended to explain the image creation process of a destination taking into account both the DMO’s online platforms and the perceived psychological distance. The proposed model is tested with an empirical study including a questionnaire which collects data from 264 participants. The validity of the model is reviewed through PLS analysis. Results show that the psychological distance does not influence the overall destination image. In addition, the overall destination image can be estimated to a larger extent when tourists approach social media as their main source of information. Implications and conclusions are discussed.Universidad de Málaga. Campus de Excelencia Internacional Andalucía Tech

Marketing plan: The launching of a tourism agency for the surf market

Internet changed the way people interact and communicate. Marketers soon realized its potential and started using it for business purpose. E-commerce growing popularity is a consequence of the endless business opportunities internet has made possible. Firms are being forced to explore this new reality, which they cannot ignore, and to enhance their own marketing and selling capabilities within this context. E-commerce has significantly changed the Tourism Industry and now the online market represents more value then ever. It has provided suppliers with new tools and new ways to sell more but more importantly it has contributed to the growth of e-mediaries which are companies that act as intermediaries in tourism and have their operations exclusively online, as for an example, online tourism agencies. This was developed in the context of master thesis and with this scenario in mind. The project consists in a Strategic Marketing Plan for an online tourism agency. The idea is to create, from the marketing point-of-view, a modern travel agency which operates solely in the online market. Regarding the increasing interest for the sea cluster and its strategic relevance, I thought it would be of interest to direct the online agency for one specific kind of tourism - the surf tourism.A Internet mudou a forma como as pessoas interagem e comunicam. Os Marketers rapidamente identificaram o potencial deste canal e rapidamente o adaptaram para finais comerciais. A popularidade crescente do e-commerce é consequência do sem número de oportunidades que a Internet tornou possível. As empresas são forçadas a lidar com esta nova realidade que, não podem ignorar, e a melhorarem as suas próprias capacidades para vendas e marketing dentro deste contexto. O e-commerce mudou significativamente a indústria do turismo e, agora, o mercado online representa um valor que nunca teve. A internet disponibilizou aos fornecedores ferramentas e novas formas de vender mas, ainda mais importante, possibilitou o aparecimento de e-mediaries. As e-mediaries são empresas que têm o papel de intermediário na cadeia de distribuição, no entanto, só operam no mercado online, como por exemplo, as agências de turismo online. Decidi desenvolver a minha tese de mestrado em marketing com o cenário em mente descrito em cima. O projeto consiste na construção de um plano de marketing para uma agência de turismo online. A ideia é de criar, do ponto de vista de marketing, uma agência moderna que opere somente no mercado online. Tendo em conta o interesse crescente pelo cluster mar e a sua relevância estratégica, decidi direcionar a agência de turismo para um mercado em específico – o turismo de surf

Understanding user participation in Australian Government tourism Facebook page

With Facebook being the largest social network site (SNS), can government use Facebook (FB) to increase citizen participation in delivering and promoting their services? This paper presents the case of government use of social media for tourism to provide a general understanding online government and user participation in the Tourism government FB page. This is a case study research into the government FB page of Tourism Australia. FB page wall posts and comments are analysed quantitatively using content analysis to determine what type of online participation is visible in these sites and what the agencies are trying to achieve. Further, the paper employed a spectrum of online engagement matrix to identify the type of engagement being attained by the page. Findings show that the page has successfully served as a platform for its audience to share their Australian experience and it is being used for the purpose of announcing, informing and involving type of online engagement. This is an example of a crowdsourcing endeavour where tourism experiences and stories and pictures are being sourced from public. The research contributes to gaining a better understanding of government FB phenomenon, in particular for Australian context.<br /

A STUDY ON TRAVEL INFORMATION ADOPTION INTENTION IN THE ONLINE SOCIAL COMMUNITY: THE PERSPECTIVES OF CUSTOMER EXPERIENCE AND INFORMATION ADOPTION MODEL

With the popularity of the online social community, people have become accustomed to sharing their travel experiences online. Internet users can read about others’ experiences, view tour photos, and gather information from other users during their leisure time or before travelling abroad. This study based on the information adoption theory and the concept of experience marketing; additionally, the moderating effects of consumption point on association among customer experiences, information usefulness, and information adoption intentions has been investigated. An Internet survey was conducted for data collection, and 492 returned responses were analyzed. The findings show that customer experience and information usefulness increase Internet users’ information adoption intentions and that the quality and credibility of Internet tourism information have a positive effect on customer experience and information usefulness. Content vividness was linked to an improved user experience. Consumption point influences the relationship between information usefulness and information adoption intentions, but it does not affect the relationship between customer experience and information adoption intention

The Internet, Aesthetic Experience, and Liminality

This work analyzes the transitional activities and experiences that are inherent to accessing and navigating the Internet. Under established anthropological fieldwork of liminality theory by Victor Turner, as well as John Dewey\u27s claims in experiential aesthetic theory, aesthetic experiences of the Internet are characterized. This paper concludes that such internet experiences abide by liminal thresholds and therefore comprise aesthetic distinction and significance. While Dewian aesthetics can only characterize this aesthetic distinction to a certain degree, Blanka Domagalska provides an alternative liminal explanation towards classifying such experience and its effect on individuation. Conclusive classifications of internet experiences in turn lend to greater metaphysical considerations regarding humanity\u27s manifestation of being in a hyper-mediated, internet accessible world

Using Facebook to build a community in the Conjunto Arqueológico de Carmona (Seville, Spain)

When the Conjunto Arqueológico de Carmona (Seville) wasinaugurated as the first open-air archaeological museum in Spainin 1885, the institution enjoyed a local community of peopleinterested in archaeology, but this community lost strength overtime. One hundred years later, the institution has the goal of beinga participative museum, and rekindling a special relationship withthe local population, to form a new community of users whichcomplements visitors. This article presents the preliminary resultsof a descriptive and exploratory study involving Facebook use tofind out the demographic characteristics of people interested in theConjunto Arqueológico de Carmona, as previous research to forma local community interested in archaeology and cultural heritage.Special attention is paid to the role played by education througharchaeology as a means to improve social empowerment

The Most Interesting Thing: Dina Kelberman's I'm Google

Dina Kelberman's ongoing tumblr blog I'm Google, begun in 2011, gathers found images and videos into a continuous grid, placing thematically disparate but visually similar moments together to create what the artist describes as a visual representation of a common phenomenon fundamental to the World Wide Web: searching for obscure information and encountering unexpected results. Kelberman discovers the materials included in I'm Google through keyword searches that translate her questions about things and processes in the physical world into digital images via Google's image search. This paper examines Kelberman's use of online search in I'm Google as both process and motif. I argue that Kelberman's exploration of conceptual and technological aspects of searching for information online creates an artwork in which the viewer acts as an ontological system, forming relationships between items and developing an ordered domain of visual knowledge from the immense chaos of the World Wide Web.Master of Art

The User Is Dead, Long Live the User: Creation through Consumption in the Context of the Reader and the User

In her essay Too Much World: Is the Internet Dead? Hito Steyerl claims that “the internet is not dead. It is undead and it\u27s everywhere. In his essay The Death of the Author Roland Barthes writes: It is necessary to overthrow the myth: the birth of the Reader must be at the cost of the death of the Author. The figure of the reader and the figure of the user have, at different times, been placed on the consumer side of a consumer-producer opposition. The term user was coined by developers to describe a certain type of consumer-- one that knew how to navigate the platforms being developed, but not enough to develop these themselves. In literary theory, the reader was not considered an agent in creating a text until Barthes introduced the reader as an actor in literary discourses to the world. Over time, different critics (particularly in Reader Response Theory) made more room for the reader and the reader\u27s responses to texts as a creative entity. I place these evolving conceptions of the reader in conversation with what writings exist on the user because while I do not seek to equate them, I believe that they do have productive things to say to each other. In comparing the figure of the reader and that of the user, I introduce the term critical bricolage, which refers to a type of creation based in consumption. Critical bricolage encompasses the hunting, gathering, scavenging, and then compiling, collecting, and curating of content by the reader and user -- it is how they create their own space and respond to an environment that didn\u27t leave one for them. Critical bricolage manifests in the form of literary response for the reader. In the case of the user, critical bricolage changed as the environment of the internet changed, and continues to change. Because of this, I spend more time with recent examples of critical bricolage in the context of the user; I primarily focus on the work of user-artists like Guthrie Lonergan, William Boling, LIllian Schwartz, Cory Arcangel, James Bridle, and Jodi

Opinion mining and sentiment analysis in marketing communications: a science mapping analysis in Web of Science (1998–2018)

Opinion mining and sentiment analysis has become ubiquitous in our society, with applications in online searching, computer vision, image understanding, artificial intelligence and marketing communications (MarCom). Within this context, opinion mining and sentiment analysis in marketing communications (OMSAMC) has a strong role in the development of the field by allowing us to understand whether people are satisfied or dissatisfied with our service or product in order to subsequently analyze the strengths and weaknesses of those consumer experiences. To the best of our knowledge, there is no science mapping analysis covering the research about opinion mining and sentiment analysis in the MarCom ecosystem. In this study, we perform a science mapping analysis on the OMSAMC research, in order to provide an overview of the scientific work during the last two decades in this interdisciplinary area and to show trends that could be the basis for future developments in the field. This study was carried out using VOSviewer, CitNetExplorer and InCites based on results from Web of Science (WoS). The results of this analysis show the evolution of the field, by highlighting the most notable authors, institutions, keywords, publications, countries, categories and journals.The research was funded by Programa Operativo FEDER Andalucía 2014‐2020, grant number “La reputación de las organizaciones en una sociedad digital. Elaboración de una Plataforma Inteligente para la Localización, Identificación y Clasificación de Influenciadores en los Medios Sociales Digitales (UMA18‐ FEDERJA‐148)” and The APC was funded by the same research gran