breaking up is hard to do: why do travellers unlike travel-related organizations?

ENTER 2014 Research Track Slide Number 1

Breaking Up Is Hard To Do:Why Do Travellers Unlike

Travel-Related Organizations?

Ulrike Gretzel and Anja Dinhopl

University of Wollongong, Australia


Web 2.0 Marketing• Engaged and empowered consumers (Sigala,

2007; Chung & Buhalis, 2008; Schmalleger & Carson, 2008; Constantinides & Foundtain, 2008; Shao, Davila Rodriguez & Gretzel, 2012)

• Emphasis on customer relationship management (Gupta, Jones & Coleman, 2004; Niininen, Buhalis & March 2007; Li & Petrick, 2008; Niininen, March & Buhalis, 2006)

• Emphasis on social networking sites as a central communication tool for CRM (Yoo & Gretzel, 2010; Gretzel, Fesenmaier, Formica & O’Leary, 2006)


From CRM to CRM 2.0 (Yoo & Gretzel, 2010)

CRM• One-way communication• Offline customer service

center• Limited customer data

• Limited C2C communication

• Delayed response

CRM 2.0• Feedback from customer• Online customer service

• Customer identification with data mining

• Virtual customer communities

• Real-time communication


Previous Research

Relationship Creation Relationship Maintenance

× Relationship Termination– Who unlikes?– Why do they unlike? – Implications for CRM?


Method• Online survey through panel provider during

01/2013 in Australia, UK, US, Canada, and India. • Sample of 3,635 Travellers (= respondents who

generally take at least one domestic or international vacation each year)– N = 898 have ever liked a travel-related company or

destination on facebook– N = 127 have ever unliked a travel-related company or

destination on facebook


Analysis

Quantitative Analysis• Results for both travel-related

companies and destinations will be presented together (referring to travellers who have unliked a travel-related company and/or destination as travellers who have unliked a travel-related organization)

• Statistically significant Chi Square results (at p<0.05 level)

Qualitative Analysis• Two open-ended questions for

respondents to elaborate on their motivations for unliking

• Inductive approach

Describing differences among those who have unliked a travel-related organization and those who have liked, but never unliked, a travel-related organization


Results• Unliking travel-related businesses is not often

reported – 14.1% of travellers who have liked a travel-related

organization on facebook have also unliked – equivalent to 3.5% of all travellers in the sample.

• Overlap between unlikers– 51.2% have only unliked a travel-related company,

32.3% have only unliked a destination, and 16.5% have unliked both.


Dating Profiles

http://blogs.villagevoice.com/runninscared/2011/02/10_rules_for_re.php


It’s Not You,

It’s Me

It’s Not You,

It’s Me Demographic Differences Have

Unliked Have Not Unliked

Gender Male 52.8 45.7 Female 47.2 54.3

Age 18 – 24 11.0 14.8 25 – 34 33.1 25.8 35 – 44 22.0 22.4 45 – 54 18.9 17.9 55+ 15.0 19.1

Education Do not have a university degree 29.2 38.5 Undergraduate degree 34.6 29.2 Postgraduate degree 36.2 32.3

Employment Status Working full-time or part-time 76.4 57.5 Unemployed/Retired 7.9 25.0

Country Australia 18.9 21.6 Canada 20.5 21.0 United Kingdom 11.0 22.8 United States 10.2 19.6 India 39.4 15.0


I’m not good at

relationships

I’m not good at

relationships Psychographic Differences

• Less likely to commit

• Less likely to be conscientious, more likely to be extraverted

Have Unliked

Have Not Unliked

Gender

Relationship Status Not in a relationship 22.0 23.3 Uncommitted relationship (not living together) 15.0 8.7 Committed relationship (living together/married) 61.4 66.4

Employment Status


I’m not ready to

settle down

I’m not ready to

settle down

Differences in Vacation Planning Behavior

• More likely to plan vacations online (49.6% vs. 29.1%)• More likely to use social media for vacation planning

(66.9% vs. 60.7%)• More likely to interact with travel-related companies on

facebook (86.4% vs. 79.7%) Have

Unliked Have Not Unliked

Gender

Activity on a travel-related company or destination timeline

86.4 79.7

Commented on a post 31.5 19.5 Shared a post with others 29.9 21.6 ‘Liked’ a post 35.4 31.0 Invited others to become fans 20.5 11.9 Downloaded an application 14.2 8.6 Participated in a discussion 21.3 13.5 Sent a private message to the company/destination 21.3 9.5


We should

see other people

We should

see other people

Differences in Vacation Behavior

• Travel more frequently– 5+ in-country vacations/year: 26.0% vs. 18.4%– 5+ international vacations/year: 6.3% vs. 3.4%

• More likely to visit different destinations


Reasons for Breaking Up

http://blogs.villagevoice.com/runninscared/2011/02/10_rules_for_re.php


Reasons for Breaking Up

Travel-related company• Company-related

– bad experience – lack of interest in purchasing

from the company– change in promotional offers

• Social media-related– too high or too low frequency

of posts– lack of information provided

by the company’s posts

Destination• Destination-related

– bad experience – lack of interest in visiting the

destination– spill-over of a destination’s

bad reputation to one’s own• Social-media related

– high frequency of posts


Bad experienceTravel-related company

• Bad customer service• Failure to live up to

travellers’ expectations

“I had a bad experience when renting a car at a local Enterprise location and

wanted nothing further to do with that company ever.”

Destination• Wider range,more specific, more

consideration• Beyond scope of DMO

– encounters with local people– insufficient infrastructure– lack of cleanliness– high costs– bad experiences with other travel-

related companies

“It was somewhere that I had travelled to that I did not like – I would not dislike a place unless I

have been there.”


Lack of interestTravel-related company

• Promotional period or contest over

“It wasn’t an airline I used, I liked it for the promotion,

then unliked it later.”

Destination

• Safety concerns“Warfare being active there, or

highly probably (sic) to occure (sic) soon.”

• Spillover of bad reputation to one’s own“The location had a bad reputation like Dachau.”


Social-media relatedTravel-related company

• High frequency of posts“They started filling up my

newsfeed.” • Sell push only, otherwise lack of

information in posts“If any company doesnt (sic) have

much to say or is [a] hard sell all the time then i (sic) dont (sic) see the point in being with them […] they need to talk to us in other

ways and create shared interests with us.”

Destination

• Frequency of posts less consistently mentioned as reasons for unliking

• Destinations NOT seen as businesses wanting to sell a product– Extension of own reputation– Experiential CV


Conclusions• Differences between travellers• Different motivations for unliking between

travel-related companies and destinations– Company: functional and tenuous– Destination: deeper emotional attachment


Implications• Engage customers on social media without

relying on traditional sales approaches– Consumer as a co-creator of value and a co-manager of

conversations

• Need to not only monitor customer engagement but also disengagement– Companies: breakup related to social media behaviour– Implement a strategic social media marketing plan: prevent

losing customers for reasons related to the company’s social media presence


Limitations and future research• Limitations

– Small sample size– Respondents from 5 different countries (may not capture or

overstate differences/similarities)

• Future Research– Emotional experience of the act of unliking– Travellers who never establish a relationship– Which communication strategies are appropriate for which

audience?– How selective are travellers in establishing relationships? Impact on

unliking?


Thank you!

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