How Social Midea Impact on Hospitality Industry in China Market - Research Proposal Example

Proposal Impact of social media on hospitality industry in China Introduction Hospitality industry, particularly hotels, uses a number of social media platforms like Facebook, YouTube, LinkedIn and Twitter to market its services and products. Social media, through a vast array of its technologies, enables this industry to monitor perspectives and facilitate online functionality through data and other tools to either develop or further enhance the quality and reach of its services with an aim to drive customer satisfaction. Social media as a potent marketing tool helps engage customers in a dialogue and recognize their expectations. Whereas previously hospitality industry was able to interact with its customers during the period in which services were provided, now the social media has made it possible to do the same during, before and even after the customers avail hospitality services. The use of social media in hospitality industry is gradually getting viral and the technology is not only new but also offers an unmatched advantage on account of being affordable with a reach that is unimaginable. Lanz, Fischhof, & Lee (2010) have stated that platforms like YouTube, Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn provide exceptional access to the guests. They do not only enable the industry to be in direct touch with the customers and seek direct feedback in a matter of few minutes but also increases brand awareness of the products available. Better the understanding of hospitality industry of social media, greater are the chances of staying afloat in a highly competitive scenario. Hotels are the main stakeholders in the hospitality industry and correct mix of marketing forms the main aspect of its growth and success. As on date, social media is considered to be a 'new marketing kid in town' which, if used appropriately, can provide niche entry points in this competitive world’s marketplace. It is imperative for managers working in the hospitality industry to continuously look for tools that appeal new customers and retain old ones (Schneider, 2009). In today's marketplace that is driven by ‘virtual world networks’, social media plays an important role. Laudon and Traver (2007) have remarked that groups of individuals or businesses that have a profile created for them either to communicate with each other or promote themselves give rise to social networks. Social media in China provides interesting statistics. Nearly 30 percent of social media users are in the age group of 26 to 20 years, a target considered as ideal for advertisers. On a whole nearly as many as 91 percent of Chinese population using internet has social accounts; a figure that is around 22 percent more than that of United States. China's top 10 social media sites are inhabited by an estimated 3.2 billion individual accounts with nearly 507 million people active on social media (Millward, 2013). China's social media has its own clones of popular world sites like Twitter, Facebook, and Whatsapp. The Twitter-like clone Tencent Weibo holds the second postion, followed up by Sina Weibo, whcih is third. Facebook clones are Tencent's QZonw, Renren, Kaixin and Tencent’s Pengyou. And WeChat is a Whatsapp-like platform. Hospitality industry in China is considering social media in the country as a hot a marketing destination because in 2012 alone the volume of social sharing went up by 60 percent with QZone having 712 million users, Tencent Weibo 507 million, Sina Weibo 500 million, 51.com 200 million, Kaixin 001 113 million, Renren 172 million, Jiayuan 73 million, and Douban 172 million users. The user base was divided between 57 percent male and 43 percent female population with 88 percent of user population active on at least one social network. An important feature of social media users, which is relevant to hospitality industry marketing, is that each user follows at least 8 brands and 43 percent are interested in products shared by friends on these social media platforms. Nearly 38 percent of Chinese internet users are influenced in their shopping decisions of products or services by recommendations they check on social media networks (Go Globe, 2013). Purpose of the study The purpose of this study is to provide a descriptive overview of impact of social media on hospitality industry in China with specific focus on hotels Statement of objective This study is being undertaken with an objective to evaluate the impact of social media platforms in China on hospitality industry. Use of social media is a recent phenomenon for businesses to invest time into with a hope of creating alternative communication mode to engage customers and cultivate long term relationships with them. Rationale of the study Currently social media and strategies pertaining to it have generated a hype in the marketing segment across several products and services. While the hospitality industry does perceive an advantage in using social media platforms to its benefit, there are still gaps that this industry needs to fill in order to catch up with latest trends that social platforms dole out every day. The greatest challenge faced by the hospitality industry, particularly the hotel segment, is how to keep customers engaged by using virtual network experiences to have a feel of the property that they are persuaded to hire. Social media sites like Twitter and Facebook are increased in their access every day and in fact working to the advantage of those businesses which jumped on their bandwagon before anyone else did. This is because of the control search engines exert in providing results to search queries. As a result of this greatest pay offs are seen by these 'early birds' who have long association with several virtual networks (Walsh, 2010). In Chinese context, the problem for external hospitality marketers, who are already popular on Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter, is that here they have to begin afresh because China has clones of these popular networks that are more popular than the originals. This research will address the impact from twin perspectives of how social media impacts hospitality industry in China and what is the role of these clone sites and the originals. Limitations One of the primary limitations of this research will be that it will use secondary data to study the impact social media platforms on hospitality industry in China. Even as use of secondary sources for research is encouraged because it is relatively cheaper than doing a primary data-based research and is less time consuming, Stewart & Kamins (1993) have stated it has many disadvantages too. One it is hard to validate, two, it provides results that are conflicting, and three, it is not devoid of bias. Care has to be taken to make conclusions when analysing secondary data. In essence, this will be a secondary data delivered qualitative assessment of social media’s impact on hospitality industry. Theoretical framework The theoretical framework for this will be social cognitive theory discussed in the light of impact of social media’s intentional and unintended effects on consumers’ minds. This will be discussed with reference to identification, attention and motivation. Literature review McCann (2008) has defined social media as online platforms, applications, and media which facilitate collaboration, interaction and sharing of content. Weinberg (2009) has stated that social media is a empowering tool for individuals and businesses interested to promote their services or products through online channels and reach out to a larger cross-section of people and places where traditional media cannot proliferate, and if it does, it will be so exorbitantly priced that will render it unaffordable. Zarrella (2010) has stated that social media, through new and evolving technologies, enables everyone to distribute opinions, content and information on services. Social media has replaced the traditional way of marketing. While the former is a two-way communication, the latter always flows in on-way direction. Trusov et al. (2009) has remarked that social media maintains the push messaging through interactive communication. In context of the hospitality industry, Hailey (2010) has stated that social media offers an abundant advantage of direct customer communication, low cost investment and brand communication to enhance the strength of the brand. Social media stands chances of being interpreted differently by different groups of people or businesses, relying chiefly on web-based audio, video or data tools. In context of hospitality industry direct communication between the service provider and customer is of pivotal significance since it provides transparency and honesty. The problem with hospitality industry is that it is not as faster as any other industry, for example consumer durables, to embrace technological advances. Even though the trend is gradually changing, yet given the size of the industry it can be said that only a fraction of it has been able to leverage the power of social media for its promotion and more importantly integration into marketing programmes. Tapscott and Williams (2006) characterise social media networks as "mass collaboration" and consider the same as the most emerging trend in marketing communication. Referring to MySpace and YouTube they opine that social media networks are a step towards wider peer collaboration, transparency, globalization and audience participation. According to them this means an emergence of a new type of market which is based on communication strategies. It has a tendency to influence brands images, markets, ideologies and opinions. Jenkins (2006) has referred to this as convergence culture; which is a mix of participatory culture, media convergence and collective intelligence. Social media helps build audience relationship frameworks that are new. Social media empowers consumers to make conscious decisions. Hospitality industry, like any other customer-centric industry is driven by consumers; they drive this market. Social media helps consumers change the way they learn, assimilate information and relate to each other. While advertising is a one-sided communication unleashed on the consumers, social media is multi-sided set of opinions that the consumers seek and get without bias. The recent trend in social media networks has been collection of information for market research purposes. This possibility was first explored by LinkedIn and Facebook in 2008 by offering 'inside' of their networks for conducting marketing research. However, LinkedIn does not continue with this service anymore (Anderson, 2009). In different segments of hospitality industry this feature can prove of immense utility for hotels to gain insight into their own and other businesses. Facebook, which carried "My Questions" by Slide application stood at a download count of 7.4 million when it was launched, though it was discontinued later. Another utility, called Fun Surveys, had more than 90,000 monthly users active on the site. This gives an idea on the immense potential of data collection that social media can provide. No human-based survey can reach 90,000 people in a month as a quickly as this one being discussed. Günther et al. (2009) has remarked that sites like Twitter serve as a pivotal communication link between business-to-customer relationships. Bansal and Chen (2011) and Stephen and Olivier (2010) favour the emergence of social commerce sites which play an instant link between service providers, like those in the hospitality industry, and customers who want to buy their services at the click of a mouse. As mentioned above, despite a lot remaining to be done by the hospitality industry in integrating social media into its campaigns, signs have already started up showing on the application of social media platform in fostering hospitality businesses. Recently Facebook was used by Tourism Australia for development of its marketing programmes. This move was hailed as one that bypassed commonplace online advertising. The leading airline, Continental Airlines, stays in touch with its customers through a dedicated online messaging system which is considered to have generated its impressive customer loyalty base. Similarly Kayak.com uses twitter for its announcements and even organises contests among its Twitter followers. Chan and Guillet (2011) and Xiang and Gretzel (2010) have stated that since new technologies determine consumer behaviour, social media's impact on hospitality industry cannot be undermined. Methodology In essence this will be a qualitative research and it will rely mostly on secondary data which will be collected from peer-reviewed papers and journals, company websites and blogs, and published books and articles. In the recent years a number of scholars have emerged as experts on the impact of social media on several factors of marketing, day-to-day life and business development. Theories as propounded by these scholars and opinions generated by them will be collected to make a comprehensive assessment of their ideas. References Anderson, THC. (2009). “Text analytics in market research-Gaining an innovative advantage”, Conference collection: Innovate 2008, ESOMAR. Bansal, G., and Chen, L (2011). “If they Trust our E-commerce Site, Will They Trust our Social Commerce Site Too? Differentiating the Trust in Ecommerce and S-commerce: The Moderating Role of Privacy and Security Concerns,” Proceedings of the 6th Midwest Association for Information Systems Conference, Omaha, Nebraska. Chan, N. L., and Guillet, B. D. (2011). Investigation of Social Media Marketing: How Does the Hotel Industry in Hong Kong Perform in Marketing on Social Media Websites?. Journal of Travel & Tourism Marketing, 28 (4), 345-368. GoGlobe.com. (2013). Social Media In China – Statistics and Trends [Infographic]. Retrieved from http://www.go-globe.com/blog/social-media-china/. Accessed May 20, 2013. Günther H., Krasnova D., and Schöndienst V. (2009). Modeling Microblogging Adoption in the Enterprise. Proceedings of the Fifteenth Americas Conference on Information Systems, San Francisco, California. Hailey, L. (2010). The importance of social media marketing today. Retrieved from http://ezinearticles.com/?The-Importance-of-Social-Media-MarketingToday&id=3873989. Accessed May 20, 2013. Lanz, L., Fischhof, B., & Lee, R. (2010). How are hotels embracing social media in 2010. Retrieved from http://hma.hotelworldasia.com/system/files/Examples_of_How_Hotels_Are_Using_Social_Media_-_A_Guide_for_Getting_Started%5B1%5D.pdf. Accessed on May 20, 2013. Laudon, K.C. and Traver, G.C. (2007). E-commerce. Pearson-Prentice Hall. New Jersey. Jenkins, H. (2006). Convergence Culture: Where Old and New Media Collide, New York, New York University Press, 2006. Millward, S. (2013). Check Out the Numbers on China’s Top 10 Social Media Sites (Infographic). Retrieved from http://www.techinasia.com/2013-china-top-10-social-sites-infographic/. Accessed May 20, 2013. McCann, U. (2008). Power to the People: Social Media Tracker Wave 3, Retrieved from http://www.universalmccann.com/Assets/UM%20Wave%203%20Final_20080505110444. Accessed May 20, 2013. Schneider, G.P. (2009). Electronic Commerce. Cengage Learning: Course Technology. Stephen A., and Olivier, T. (2010). Deriving Value from Social Commerce Networks. Journal of Marketing Research, 47 (2), 215-228. Stewart, D.W., & Kamins, M.A. (1993). Secondary research (Vol. 4). (Adobe Digital Editions version), Retrieved from http://books.google.com/books?printsec=frontcover&vid=ISBN0803950373&vid=ISBN0803950365&vid=ISBN0803950373&vid=ISBN0803950365&vid=LCCN9203501#v=onepage&q&f=false. Accessed May 20, 2013. Trusov M., Bucklin R., and Pauwels K. (2009). Effects of Word-of-Mouth Versus Traditional Marketing: Findings from an Internet Social Networking Site, Journal of Marketing, 73 (5), 90–102. Tapscott, D and Williams, AD. (2006). Wikinomics: How Mass Collaboration Changes Everything, Portfolio, New York. Weinberg, T. (2009). The New Community Rules: Marketing on the Social Web, O­Reilly Media, Sebastopol, California. Xiang Z., and Gretzel U. (2010). Role of Social Media in Online Travel Information Search, Tourism Management, 31, 179–188. Zarrella D. (2010). The Social Media Marketing Book, Canada, O’ Reilly Media Inc. Read More