The Power Of Instagram In Tourism: Visual Content Categories In Small Destinations

The advent of the web and its networked evolution, has brought to an enormous production of data. Different forms of content such as textual, visual and audio-visual can be posted online but tourism is a sector particularly linked to imaging. Photos have several roles in documenting and shaping the tourist’s experience this is why photo-based social media use in tourism is constantly growing. Following this trend, this research would like to adopt an innovative approach in analyzing the photos of small destinations uploaded on Instagram to understand the categories of the different image contents. Content analysis is applied in order to identify photo categories in small destinations, showing that some adjustments must be done to the ones that were previously applied in literature referring to bigger contexts. The objective is to shed light on how to usefully exploit user generated images to provide both an economic and a social contribution to the tourism industry. In fact, destination management organizations can obtain useful insights for better answering to tourists’ needs and wants.The advent of the web and its evolution have brought to an enormous production of data. Different forms of content such as textual, visual and audio-visual can be posted online but tourism is a sector particularly linked to imaging. Photos have several roles in documenting and shaping the tourist's experience and this is the reason why in the tourism sector photo-based social media use is constantly growing. Following this trend, this research would like to adopt a content analysis to the photos of small destinations uploaded on Instagram, to categorize the different image contents. In the literature this analysis was applied referring to big and famous cities mainly, but since small destinations have different features, more studies about this topic are needed. The objective is to shed light on which contents are uploaded as pictures related to small destinations. A framework for analysing contents can help destination management organizations to obtain useful insights for better answering to tourists' needs and wants and to exploit user generated images to provide both an economic and a social contribution to the tourism industry

The interplay role of destination area hashtags to enhance small destination pictures’ engagement on Instagram

Purpose: Hashtags are important in enriching the content of posts and in obtaining more engagement (Messina, 2007). This study aims at analysing the impact of the combination of the small destination name hashtags with hashtags mentioning the wider destination area by answering at the following research questions: (RQ1) What are the territorial hashtags used in the small destinations’ pictures capture? (RQ2) Do the mentions of the wider area through territorial hashtags impact on small destination post’s engagement? Methods: Based on hashtags’ destination names, a sample of 13,217 posts of 18 Italian small destinations are retrieved (period of higher tourism turnout in 2019). Both content analysis (RQ1) and linear regression models (RQ2) are used. Results: Scholars have never focused on the link between the engagement of a photo and the hashtags related to specific territories. Through this research, we can state that people use hashtags referring to the wider destination area (mainly combining region and nation). The hashtag of a small and niche destination together with the hashtags of the region, neighbouring territories or the nation, can improve the engagement of the related picture in terms of number of likes. Implications: This study confirms the role of the hashtags in enhancing a picture’s engagement contributing to the literature about the consumers’ feedback on online picture by adding the territorial dimension as a variable. From a managerial perspective, it suggests how destination management organizations should use hashtags in Instagram, in order to improve their offerings

Not only the picture to foster tourism: the interplay role of destination area hashtags on Instagram posts

Purpose: Hashtags are important in enriching the content of posts and in obtaining more engagement (Messina, 2007). This study aims at analysing the impact of the combination of the small destination name hashtags with hashtags mentioning the wider destination area by answering at the following research questions: (RQ1) What are the territorial hashtags used in the small destinations’ pictures capture? (RQ2) Do the mentions of the wider area through territorial hashtags impact on small destination post’s engagement? Methods: Based on hashtags’ destination names, a sample of 13,217 posts of 18 Italian small destinations are retrieved (period of higher tourism turnout in 2019). Both content analysis (RQ1) and linear regression models (RQ2) are used. Results: Scholars have never focused on the link between the engagement of a photo and the hashtags related to specific territories. Through this research, we can state that people use hashtags referring to the wider destination area (mainly combining region and nation). The hashtag of a small and niche destination together with the hashtags of the region, neighbouring territories or the nation, can improve the engagement of the related picture in terms of number of likes. Implications: This study confirms the role of the hashtags in enhancing a picture’s engagement contributing to the literature about the consumers’ feedback on online picture by adding the territorial dimension as a variable. From a managerial perspective, it suggests how destination management organizations should use hashtags in Instagram, in order to improve their offerings

Communication through visual contents: Instagram use in the wineries’ strategies

Considering the visual social media diffusion, this research aims at analysing the content of the photos posted by high-end wineries on Instagram. The objective is to evaluate the opportunities in terms of communication strategies by defining content categories and their ability to create engagement. Visual content analysis of 662 pictures is applied. Results show that the majority of the photos still focus on the product and few consider the wine in a holistic way, linking it with elements such as history, art or food even if some of these categories seem promising as far as the engagement is concerned

An analysis of factors influencing the online presence in distant countries: the case of Italian fashion firms in China

The aim of the paper is to examine some of the factors that could potentially affect a firm’s intention to adopt an online presence in international distant markets. Specifically, the study focuses on Italian fashion companies operating in China and examines the impact of a firm’s size, experience and positioning (luxury or not) on its intention to adopt a digital presence in this emerging country. Introductio

Configuration challenges for the “Made in Italy” Agri-food Industry

The paper presents the results of an exploratory investigation on the approaches to e-commerce strategies by firms in the agrifood sector, with a focus on Italian small and medium- sized enterprises (SMEs). The article tries to assess the fit between online sales configurators (OSCs) that enable product customization and the habits of Italian online buyers. The study elaborates the empirical results of two data collection efforts: (i) the first effort is to collect data on the food configurators’ capabilities deployed by a sample of 105 active OSCs and (ii) the second effort is to collect data on the characteristics of the e-commerce websites from a sample of 522 Italian SMEs. Matching the results of the two analyses with existing literature on Italian customers' requirements while shopping for food online, the study provides insights on the opportunities offered by mass-customization delivered via OSCs to food SMEs, especially in terms of customer experience (CE) innovation

Managing digital marketing strategies in emerging markets: The case of China

Since Internet has been seen as global, few studies have examined the influence of the context in the digital marketing strategies. This paper wants to contribute on the debate about standardization-adaptation, focusing on the digital strategies, defining how companies adapt them to the Chinese market identifying the drivers that call for this adaptation. China is selected because it is a contradictory market: more advanced than the Western one but also with many restrictions. We carry out a qualitative research based on interviews with nine key informants operating in the digital Chinese market with different roles. Our findings suggest that there are drivers that force companies to create an online presence and drivers that impact the digital localization. The main adaptations concern international distribution strategy and communication related to contents and media as well as organization