A Cross-Cultural Comparison of the Use and Impact of Social Media on Consumer Behavior


Oleh : Dr. Ni Made Asti Aksari, SE.,M.Bus.
dibuat pada : 2017
Fakultas/Jurusan : Fakultas Ekonomi dan Bisnis/Magister Manajemen

Kata Kunci :
Social Media, Consumer Behavior, Cross-Cultural

Abstrak :
Rapid development of information technology has changed the way people interact with each other. The growth of the Web 2.0, such as the social media, has changed the way marketers and consumers transact and communicate to one another. Research results in this area become quickly outdated and demand for continuous and more up-to-date research needs to be addressed. Despite the increasing attention towards the topics of Web 2.0 and social media in tourism research, further exploration is needed to provide up-to-date research results to gain a better understanding of topics surrounding Web 2.0 marketing in the tourism industry. To address the above issue, this research focuses on the use and impact of social media on consumer behavior in the tourism industry. Furthermore, it will also look at whether cultural differences affect consumer behavior in gathering and consuming information from the social media. Based upon the findings, this study attempts to build a framework for developing travel and tourism related social media strategies. To meet this aim, a qualitative method will be used to explore how consumers use social media to search for information during their dreaming and pre-visit stage of travel, and its impacts on consumer behavior. This research will be conducted in three phases. Phases one and two of the study will explore how Indonesians and Australians use the social media as a medium for travel information search, and how the use of social media affects their behavior. This research design allows the researchers to continue to Phase three of the study which is to compare the results of phases one and two enabling to find any similarities and differences of social media users behaviors from different cultural background, and build a research framework for developing tourism related social media strategies. Semi-structured in-depth interviews with a total of 60 research participants from Indonesia and Australia will be conducted for phases one and two of the study. The nature of this research requires sufficient amount of time to complete, therefore this research will be conducted in three years from 2017 to 2019. This research will be conducted through collaboration of researchers from Indonesia and Australia. This collaboration enables to enrich the research and research findings. The rationale of partnering with Australia is because Indonesia and Australia have had a long relationship in a number of aspects, in particular tourism. Australia has been the largest market for tourism in Bali, therefore it is beneficial for Bali marketers to understand the behavior of social media users from Australia in planning their holiday. At the same time, Indonesia also represents a large market in Australia for both leisure and education tourism. Furthermore, as this study also has a comparative nature, it is thus important that researchers from both countries are involved in this study.