Call for papers: "Social Media and Social Media Marketing in Tourism, Hospitality and Culture"

For a special issue of the International Journal of Digital Culture and Electronic Tourism.

The last decade’s digitalisation of society and development of Web 2.0 and social media has had a profound impact on how both consumers and organisations communicate and interact online. (Kaplan and Haenlein 2010, Berthon et al 2012). The expectations on tourism/hospitality organisations to implement and use social media technologies are increasing, due to the large usage among customers and stakeholders (Berthron et al 2012). Organisations use social media not only for internal communication but also for marketing purposes in order to communicate and create relationships with their customers. (Baird and Paranasis 2011). Despite the potential for competitive advantages and the growing use of social media technologies, many organisations are not convinced of its value. This is partly due to the difficulties of evaluating the usage of social media and the return of investment (ROI) (Hannah et al 2011, Weinberg et al 2011) but also factors like fear of losing control over the organisational brand and the fear that social media usage also may cause a conflict with the existing organisational culture. (Parameswaran and Whinston 2007, Berthon et al 2012). Researchers argue that to answer why and how organisations should implement and use social media is not yet obvious. (Weinberg et al 2011). Social media related topics have been investigated in the context of tourism/hospitality and culture in recent years, with the focus on both organisations and customers. However, there has been limited research undertaken on some aspects of social media such as social media implementation, organisational usage, eWOM, user-generated-content, and organisational learning. (Sigala et al 2012, Minazzi 2015).

This special issue welcomes contributions examining theoretical and empirical studies addressing organisational, managerial, technical, and marketing perspectives on social media in organisations and the usage of social media in tourism/hospitality and culture. We invite submissions on a broad range of issues in this regard, and invite studies that provide greater clarity regarding the conceptual domain of social media and digitalisation in tourism/hospitality and culture.

Suitable topics include, but are not limited to, the following:

• Social media implementation and usage
• Evaluation of social media implementation and usage in the workplace
• Social media and knowledge management
• Social media and organisational learning
• Social media marketing/strategies
• Social media and ROI
• E-WOM in social media
• Co-creating value and engagement using social media marketing
• User-generated-content
• Culture heritage of social media

Important Dates

Submission of manuscripts: 30 April, 2017
Notification to authors: 30 June, 2017
Final versions due: 30 August, 2017

References

Baird, C. H. and Parasnis, G. (2011). "From Social Media to Social Customer Relationship Management", Strategy & Leadership, Vol. 39, No. 5, 30-37.

Berthon, P.R., Pitt, L.F., Plangger, K. and Shapiro, D. (2012). "Marketing meets Web 2.0, social media, and creative consumers: implications for international marketing strategy", Business Horizons, Vol. 55 No. 3, 261-71.

Hanna, R., Rohm, A., and Crittenden, V. L. (2011). "We are all connected: The power of the social media ecosystem." Business Horizons, 54(3), 265-273.

Kaplan, A. M., and Haenlein, M. (2010). "Users of the world, unite! The challenges and opportunities of social media." Business Horizons, 53(1), 59-68.

Minazzi, R. (2015). Social Media Marketing in Tourism and Hospitality. Springer International Publishing.

Parameswaran, Manoj and Whinston, Andrew B. (2007) "Social Computing: An Overview," Communications of the Association for Information Systems: Vol. 19, pp. 6-30.

Sigala M, Gretzel U, editors (2012). Social media in travel, tourism and hospitality: theory, practice. Farnham: Ashgate.