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CHAPTER 6: CONCLUSION
6.1 Summary
A wide range of social media uses are potentially available to businesses; however, marketers are unsure of how to measure the effectiveness of these tools, and especially their effects on sales. Moreover, previous research shows that the categories of products or services are likely to affect the suitability and performance of the media. Therefore, this study aims to assess the effects of social media activities on sales along five dimensions of tourism products: the structure of tourism, the involvement of tourists, the scope of tourism, the price of products, and the length of a tour. We attempt to determine how these characteristics moderate the effect of social media marketing on sales.
To test the proposed framework and hypotheses, we collaborate with a well-known travel agency in Taiwan, which has operated a Facebook business fan page since September 2009. We obtain the sales data of all the international tourism products sold by the company between 2012 and 2013. All the tours with Facebook campaigns conducted from February 1, 2012 to November 30, 2013 are selected as our target tourism products. Additionally, we choose products from those without Facebook campaigns conducted during the same time period as a control group. To examine the changes in sales, we calculate our targeted products’ sales results (the average monthly number of customers) before and after the Facebook campaigns.
Therefore, those products that do not generate any sales order before or after the Facebook campaigns are excluded. Finally, we analyze a total of 376 samples (752 sales results). We then apply a difference-in-difference approach, comparing the changes in sales performance of the treatment group with those in the control group.
Moreover, all the samples are divided into two groups based on each dimension of tourism products to observe their effects.
The results show that Facebook campaign activities have a positive impact on the purchase of tourism products. Regarding the dimensions of tourism products, the length of a tour is the only one without a moderating effect between Facebook campaigns and sales. Furthermore, there is a stronger treatment effect on sales performance when the case company uses Facebook campaigns to promote tourism products that are less structured (e.g., independent tours), more relaxing and less stimulating (i.e., requiring less tourist involvement), limited in scope (e.g., city tours, island destinations) or relatively lower-priced.
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6.2 Limitations and Implications for Future Research
In our study, sales are the only metric used to examine the effect of Facebook campaigns on the purchasing of tourism products; accordingly, those activities that cannot be linked to specific products (e.g., discussing daily life and sharing moods with customers) are excluded from the analysis. Additionally, most consumers stated only which country they traveled to and not which product they bought in the reviews and ratings posted on the case company’s Facebook fan page; hence, we are unable to identify the related products and use the sales data to measure their treatment effect.
Therefore, in the future, this study can extend other metrics to evaluate the effects of these campaigns and reviews. Additionally, based on previous research, we observe that tourism industry suppliers take advantage of various social media to reach consumers, and thus we can also examine the use of other social media platforms and investigate their impacts on sales to achieve a more comprehensive understanding of the influence of social media in tourism.
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