A pentadic analysis of TikTok marketing in tourism: The case of Penang, Malaysia

Abstract

Several destinations have jumped on the TikTok bandwagon to explore consumer reactions and motivations towards visit intentions, though these are largely limited to point-in-time surveys. Using the example of Penang, Malaysia, this research contributes to the paucity of knowledge surrounding TikTok in tourism by analysing contents generated from the destination management organisation, travel influencers, and other tourists participating in a TikTok competition for the destination. Drawing from Burke’s Pentadic analysis, the findings reveal the sociological interactions where the performativity of the short videos are staged by different users with the destination as the backdrop. Theoretical and managerial implications are highlighted to inform current and future practices of TikTok (re)presentation in tourism, and how the platform can be used distinctively to socially interact with various target markets and stakeholders.

Performativities, pandemic pressures and ‘patchwork’ tourism places: Editor-in-Chief notes

“…Via games, travel advice and active engagement, film media apps are found to extend film tourism experiences into rich multi-layered ones. Projections and place-making of a different nature are examined by Tham et al (2024). Using the case of Malaysian town Penang, Tham and his colleagues reveal how the social processes involving the performativity of TikTok videos are orchestrated by different users with the destination as the backdrop.…”

“…While taking place in diverse geographical regions and political-social situations from lockdown China to pre-viral Scotland, these four articles converge on at least two significant research trajectories. Two of these articles (Schiavone and Brandellero, 2024; Tham et al, 2024) are united in their examinations of film and social mediated tourism place practices while the remaining two (Di Matteo and Daminelli, 2024; Ren et al, 2024) converge on critical interrogations of worker-volunteer agencies and struggles. The notion of a ‘patchwork’ had also been employed, in two divergent localities in most of our tourism imaginations – Schiavone and Brandellero (2024) taking on the multi-mediated and multi-layered aspects of experiences to discuss Edinburgh’s app-based film tourism while Di Matteo and Daminelli (2024) conceptualised their fieldwork at Lesvos’ refugee camp as a ‘comparative patchwork autoethnography’.…”