Advantages And Disadvantages Of Using Social Networks In Business – A Study On Australia Tourism Industry

Project Objectives

Disucss about the Advantages and Disadvantages of Using Social Networks in Business.

Social media tools are altering the manner in which people interact. Technological advances have improved accessibility to social media, letting it become a part of daily life and routines to people (Agresta, Bough, and Miletsky 2010). Social media has no specific definition agree upon with most of the researchers and scholars due to the emergence of other concepts alongside social media such as Web 2.0 (Morgado et al. 2011). However, Agresta, Bough and Miletsky (2010) refers social marketing as a term for the combination of multiple instruments and applications that forms the social capability of the web. Agresta and Bough (2010) define social media marketing as the applications based on the internet that transmit consumer generated content related to past experiences. Both individuals and organizations create and interchange information and in one-on-one talks.  The exchange platforms exist in different forms such as blogs, social networks, video and image sharing, among others. The most common ones include Facebook, Myspace, YouTube, Twitter, etc. (Buted et al. 2014). The tourism industry has not been left behind, and thus several studies have recognized the significance of Web 2.0 in the hospitality sector (Xiang and Gretzel 2010; Gretzel and Yoo 2013, Ruzic and Bilos 2010).  The objective of this study is to identify the advantages and the disadvantages of the social media experienced by the Tourism businesses in Australia.

The goal of this research is to ascertain the advantages and disadvantages of the use of social media in the tourism industry with a specific focus on Australia. Additionally, this paper will examine the social media channels used in tourism business and customer habits in the tourism sector.

The project’ scope is to explore the advantages and disadvantages of the use of social media in the tourism industry of Australia businesses. Tourism establishments in Australia will be used as a case study because of the emerging integration of social media marketing in the Australia tourism ndustry. The study will critically examine the use of social media marketing strategy by highlighting the opportunities and challenges. Additionally, the dynamic global market will also be assessed in the light of using social media platforms for customer relationship management. The researcher will therefore, systematically review and discuss relevant literature materials to develop the background information of the topic under study.

Scuotto et al. (2017) describe social media as a combination of online applications that permit the users namely customers, businesses or entrepreneurs to link and communicate with each other. Kang et al. (2014) also note that social media brings the effectual reward of encouraging active user involvement. From the perspective of business. Kim et al. (2015) content that social media has transformed the business strictures via internet resource, by employing it as an instrument to introduce products and services and marketing them for sales. Similar concepts are shared by Keinänen and Kuivalainen (2015) who observes that the present business market regards social media as a broad foundation in meeting the social and business needs at the same time. The authors justify their conclusion through the increasing use of social platforms for networking globally. The development of social media has taken place through the rise and growth of the Web 2.0, on the other hand, it is also contested that Web 2.0 and social media are entirely diverse ideas (Dalip et al. 2017).

Literature Review

The emergence and development of social media networks have benefited businesses through the implementation of social media marketing strategy. However, its effectiveness depends more on the content and context of communication. According to Yoo et al. (2016), social media marketing strategy encompasses the execution of the social cycle, reduces costs of business operations and thus fostering business growth. Social media marketing strategy plays significant roles in business such as content marketing of products or services, making sales, encouraging public relations, introducing value offers, widening the social cycle and organizational profitability, fostering customer feedback communication, and thus leading to general business performance (Costanza 2017).

Several studies have been carried out on the advantages of adopting social media marketing (SMM) strategy in businesses. Kim and Ko (2012) surveyed the benefits of embracing social media marketing in luxury products and found out that it increased interactions between firms and their customers enabling them to customize products and services to meet customer needs, and accomplishing useful word of mouth (WOM) marketing. Furthermore, research has shown that social media marketing fosters good customer relationship, influences customer purchase intentions, and generates brand loyalty. De Vries et al. (2012) revealed that social media was the best medium to promote associations between customers and products or services. This is because social media marketing offers the firms a platform to position their products or information about their services in the form of images, texts, videos, infographs etc. Moreover, the availability of other alternatives like post sharing, comments, hash tagging among others are used by customers to show the preferences, acceptance, or denial  of the given product or service. Habibi, et al. (2014) found out that the constant association between the customers and the business creates a good rapport which develops a positive attitude of the customers towards the products and services promoted through the social media platform.

Contrariwise, SMM comes with disadvantages. The study by Kimmel & Kitchen (2014) found out that WOM generated new innovative concepts for products and services, but also led to the loss of potential customers due to the negative remarks made by unsatisfied customers. Studies have also shown that social media influence customer purchase decisions leading to impulsive buying due to increased product visibility and service information. Constant exposure to promotional information by the reluctant buyer prompts him/her to click on the post and as a result of the promotional techniques used, the customer develops interest in the item or service (Shankar et al. 2016; Hsu and Cheng 2018). On the other hand, negative reviews or communications concerning given product or services influences the purchase intention of other consumers who had not experienced the product. This becomes an advantage to the competing products or services.

Hudson et al. (2016) opine that the integration of social media in business creates brand awareness. The authors also found out that periodic spending of some hours on social to establish and develop social network management increases the exposure of the products and services to customers. Siamagka et al. (2015) also added that social media is the most economical digital marketing technique for businesses because it permits content customization which increases product visibility and awareness of services offered. Consequently, information about products and services reaches several and distant markets within a short period, and the customer feedbacks ensures that they are a participative audience which can make recommendations for improvement.

Parveen et al. (2015) observed that the generation of site traffic by using social media is of benefit to the organization because it enhances search engine rankings, and as a result, the organization’s product and services are easily accessed by many thus increasing sales. Businesses which have not integrated social media channels in their marketing strategy have limited inbound traffic. Therefore, most of the customers are not aware of the products and services offered by the firm leading to low sales (McCann and Barlow 2015). The use of blogs, infographics, visual images, videos among others enables the formulation of an intriguing, creative and unique content that attracts customers and develops interest in them towards the marketed products or services.

Kilgour et al. (2015) contend that despite the noticeable benefits of social media in business, it also comes with drawbacks which can equally be costly to the company. Social media improves communication with customers through generating feedback, and this demands a lot of devoted time, an aspect which can be expensive to small and medium-sized enterprises with limited resources.  

The research by Elbaz et al. (2018) found out that social media can negatively impact the organizations reputation especially in the hotel industry in situations when the customers are dissatisfied with the services such as miscommunications, bad front desk services, etc. Additionally, social media accounts have also been critiqued for unethical practices of sharing individual confidential information and forced sales with customers (Dineva et al. 2017).  Thus it is evident that all customers will welcome social media integration (Allcott and Gentzkow 2017). Xanthopoulos et al. (2016) also noted that hashtags are mostly used for airing grievances due to unsatisfied services or products. As a result negative publicity of the organization’s reputation goes viral and the hashtag campaign ends up in abusive debates with the business instead of using compensation strategy.

Primary Question

1.    What are the advantages and disadvantages of the use of social media by the Tourism businesses in Australia?

Secondary Questions

1.    What are the typical social media channels used in the tourism industry?
2.    What are advantages and disadvantages of using social media in the tourism industry?
3.    What are the challenges encountered when applying social media as a medium for business activities in the tourism industry?

Qualitative

Qualitative data is to be conducted to provide an in-depth understanding of the research topic. The researcher first developed general research questions then will afterward seek permission of the relevant site for study through writing after doing a literature review of the suggested topic. Convenience sampling will then be used to select the sample size of 50 out of 500 employees and tourists from 4 resorts, three restaurants, and three hotels distributed across Australia. Semi-structured Interview method will be used to gather data because it ensures equivalent coverage (Creswell and Creswell 2017), and it also takes relatively less time. The interview discussions will be taped or noted down depending on the dictates of the interviewee and analyzed.

Quantitative

The research will adopt a descriptive research design because it is the most appropriate in collecting information about the current conditions. Questionnaires with close-ended questions (Appendix 1) will be used to gather data to have ease and enhanced comparability (Suri 2011). An interview will also be used support and validated the collected data (Suri 2011). The research will select ten establishments based on the obtained data from tourism officer wherein is listed all hospitality companies. Purposive sampling and random sampling will be used to select samples from the target population. This approach is preferred because it will enable the selection criterion which is all hospitality establishments in Australia currently employing social media marketing strategy. A sample size of 50 employees out of 500 employees and tourists across the ten establishments (4 resorts, three restaurants, and three hotels) will be examined. The researcher will distribute the questionnaires through hand delivery and collected after two weeks. The completed questionnaires will be checked for completeness and reliability, then coded, grouped and then analyzed using SPSS, and results presented in the form of tables and diagrams.

Validity and Reliability

To ascertain validity and reliability of data, the questionnaires will first be tried by six participants who are not to form part of the final survey. Any deviations are to be rectified before the actual study.

Research Limitations

The sample size for the study is small for it only targets four resorts, three restaurants and three hotels in entire Australia. This, therefore, limits the generalization of the findings to a broader context

Research Plan

The study is expected to take approximately three months beginning April to June 2018.

Activity	Start Date	End Date	Duration (Days)
Choosing study topic	12/04/2018	20/04/2018	8
Developing of research objectives	22/04/2018	26/04/2018	4
Data Collection Approach	28/04/2018	02/05/2018	4
Development of Questionnaire	04/05/2018	10/05/2018	6
Project Proposal organization	12/05/2018	20/05/2018	8
Sample size of survey	22/05/2018	26/05/2018	4
Data collection	27/05/2018	09/06/2018	13
Data analysis	11/06/2018	18/06/2018	7
Write-up and submission	23/06/2018	28/06/2018	5

Conclusion

The integration of social media by businesses in their marketing strategy has received much attention from scholars and researchers. However, the findings of such studies conflict due to the variation of the contexts under investigation or the type of consumers examined. This study intends to deliberately explore the effects of social media in the Tourism industry in the context of Australia.

References

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