Impact of Social Networking Evaluation on Travel Websites - Essay Example

An Evaluation of the Impact of Social Networking on Travel Websites Research Proposal Project Justification Social Networking has come a long since the introduction of sites such as MySpace, Facebook, Cyworld, Bebo. Orkut, Friendster and more in the list of World Wide Web, the phenomena is being used by most of the people around globe and are utilizing it in efficient and inefficient manner. The section that has profited with the use of social networking sites other than the owners are business groups who want to attract more number of customers to increase their sales, or customer count. (Boyd and Ellison, 2007) Some of the companies that have creating social networking sites include online games, photo sharing, forums, etc. And following the trend, some of the websites have created social travel sites pushing community based features and to create a community around travel. The courses undertaken have provided an adequate foundation for examining and analyzing issues in social networking on travel sites. During the coursework and preliminary review of literature, a specific interest has been developed on the subject and an attempt is made to assess and analyze the impact of growth of travelling social networking sites and how does it effects the business and growth of traveling business. Overview As a response to changing business environments and the aim of improving organizational performance and remaining competitive, businesses have made investments in IT projects (Gunasekaran et al, 2001) Travel businesses need to invest in Information Technology (IT) to face the competition as well to give tough times to its rivals. For example, ‘fitfortravel’ is a website that has been developed by the National Health Service, Scotland for the provision of travel health information for people travelling abroad from the UK. The site has gained immense popularity as travelers find the information provided highly valuable (NHS, Scotland, 2009) Illum et al. (2009) suggested the potential of virtual communities in tourism research. Enhancing value creation and creation of brand identiy were pre-requisites in the creation of social networks in tourism. (Lemmetyinen & Go, 2009) The advent of “Web 2.0” has led to a series of new web service. Social Networking has benefited from new internet technologies and new user behavior to become the poster child of web services. Questions on social sites include how they create value for users and how users capture it. Studies have examined revenue generation on social network sites through advertising, subscription and transaction models. Key value drivers include user volume, willingness to pay, trust in peers and the platform. (Enders et al, 2008) Perceived reciprocity is a pre-requisite for committed relationship and avoiding negative consequences (Andreu et al., 2009) Research efforts have been directed towards understanding behavior of online customers. Bai et al (2008) studied the impact of the quality of a website on customer satisfaction and intentions to purchase. They found that the quality of a website had a direct and positive impact on purchase intentions of customers. However, customer satisfaction has a mediating effect. There has been an increase in the number of people using travel websites to plan their itineraries and acquiring travel information. Travel websites provide diverse services such as travel information and products through internet. A strong competitive environment has led travel websites to improve the electronic service quality (e-SQ) of their sites in order to profit from customer transactions on their websites. Evaluation of e-SQ could be treated as a multiple criteria decision making problem. An approach to this problem is the determination of degrees of importance or criteria, and identification of critical criteria to evaluate service quality. (Hu, 2009) Components of e-travel service quality are information quality, security, website functionality, customer relationships and responsiveness. These factors were found to have strong predictive capability with regard to customer satisfaction and loyalty (Ho & Lee, 2007). The effect of website information could be classified as substitution and enhancement. Lu et al (2009) determined that enhancement occurs later than function, but develops faster and with greater force. Blake et al. (2005) determined that form and substantive discriminate between the level of innovativeness and the level of internet experience. Users with more internet experience display stronger preference for substantive features, but the level of experience does not differ with regard to form feature preferences. However, innovative shoppers revealed strong preference for form features. Grossman (2007) determined that people can even search online for the perfect seat mate while visiting travel social networking sites allowing maximum services from planning the trip to security. As travelers have been increasingly planning and looking trips online, attributes of online travel agencies that customers find important were finding low fares followed by security. Web features, user friendliness, security and low fares influenced travelers’ perceptions (Kim et al, 2007) Usability, reputation and satisfaction had a significant influence on customer satisfaction. Users with lower levels of familiarity were influenced by usability. However, users with higher levels of familiarity had direct influence on satisfaction from usability and loyalty (Casalo, 2008) Features that determine website qualities are accessibility, speed, navigability, content and Web Assessment Index. Users feel comfortable and secure in websites with good navigability increasing the probability of completing a transaction. Users feel that information on a website must be accurate, innovative, updated and relevant to their requirements (Hernandez et al. 2009) The role of social media has been increasing as an important source of information for travelers. Xiang and Gretzel (2009) investigated the extent to which social media appeared in search engine results within the context of travel related searches. Traveler’s use of search engine was simulated by using a set of keywords. Social media constituted a significant part of search results and indicated that search engines were likely to direct travelers to social media sites. The researchers concluded that social media has been growing in importance in the domain of online tourism. Internet based social media has enabled people to communicate with millions of people about products and services and companies that provide them. The impact of consumer communications has been greatly magnified in the marketplace. Social media has been considered as hybrid as it enables companies to talk to their customers and simultaneously it enables customers to communicate directly with one another. This is in contrast to traditional marketing communications that is integrated with a high degree of control. Manager should learn to shape discussions of consumers in a manner that is conducive to the mission and performance goals of the organization. Methods include provision of networking platforms, user blogs, social media tools, and other promotional tools to engage visitors and customers. (Mangold G. & Faulds 2009) Highly innovative travelers are influenced by their positive attitudes, while less innovative travelers relied on attitude and referrals opinions for reducing uncertainty during online transactions. Lee et al (2007) concluded that the prosperity to shop for travel related products showed a decrease with increasing the referents’ social influence among highly innovative travelers. Cyr et al (2007) suggested that perceived usefulness, trust and enjoyment influenced loyalty among consumers in e-Service environments. Representations of tourist destinations could be analysed for narrative and visual information to determine variations in information from various sources such as tour operators, travel agents, magazines and guides online. Variations could be caused by communication objectives and targeted audiences of information sources (Choi et al, 2007) Objectives a) Investigate the influence of IT and developments in social networking in general and travel businesses in particular b) Identify trends and approaches in social networking for travel business studying the popular travel websites c) Determine search engine optimization techniques used by travel websites and user perception of top ranked website attributes based on survey d) To further suggest any improvement in present social networking practices for travel websites Research Design a) Investigate various sources of information in the internet and library. b) Conduct a review of literature of journals, and other sources of information such as conference proceedings and white papers c) Conduct case studies of selected travel websites d) The results obtained from the review of literature and case studies would be analyzed and summarized to identify social networking techniques and approaches used by travel websites e) Recommendations based on good practices identified in the study would be included Reasons for selecting this project and how my prior skills/knowledge plus a. The courses undertaken have provided a foundation to investigate and analyze issues that exist in social networking within a specific industry. b. The study would provide an opportunity to understand techniques and the approaches for social networking within the travel industry. c. The number of social networking projects that would be undertaken by travel businesses in the future is likely to increase and this study would provide adequate preparation to undertake the challenges. References Andreu, L., Aldás, J., Bigné, E. *Mattila, A. (2009). An analysis of e-business adoption and its impact on relational quality in travel agency–supplier relationships. Tourism Management. Available online Bai, B., Law, R. & Wen, I. (2008). The impact of website quality on customer satisfaction and purchase intentions: Evidence from Chinese online visitors. International Journal of Hospitality Management. 27 (3), 391-402. Blake, B., Neuendorf, K. & Valdiserri, C. (2005). 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(2009). Social media: The new hybrid element of the promotion mix. Business Horizons. 52 (4), 357-365. NHS Scotland. (2009). fitfortravel. Available: http://www.fitfortravel.scot.nhs.uk/home.aspx. Last accessed 27 October 2009. Xiang, Z. & Gretzel, U. (2009). Role of social media in online travel information search. Tourism Management . Available online Read More