Social Media and Revenue Management; Where Should the Two Meet?

Abstract

A bstr act The objective of this study is to explore how social media strategies can be integrated with the function of revenue management. A survey was used to evaluate the extent to which some travel firms use/perceive social media. This study explores possible synergy between the time spent developing social media channels and the opportunities these might generate for travel firms active in the application of revenue management tactics. This has lead to the recommendation of new practices that could potentially enhance future revenue and profit. The present study identifies that travel firms can build opportunities to capture additional revenues by focusing on building engaging and useful content for customers. The travel industry is just beginning to embrace the need to combine public relations (PR) activities with new marketing approaches that must engage, rather that use interruption and coercion to generate sales. As engagement of the public with social media grows, it is evident that this will have implications for revenue management approaches, in the same way that approaches to PR and marketing have needed to evolve with the growth in online interaction between consumers. A shift in strategic outlook may enhance the ability of travel companies to sell valued products, improve customer relationships and increase their bottom-line; hence it becomes even more important for such organizations to ensure they have a solid social media strategy. I NT RODUCT I ON This study aims to provide recommendations for integration of social media usage with revenue management strategies. To shed light on the field of study, social media applications have been assessed as consumer influencers, and tools to capitalise on consumer creativity. An exploratory survey of 36 travel professionals has provided a glimpse into how social media tools are perceived in range of travel organizations. Social Media (SM) represents a growing trend of interest to most businesses, as its usage is not limited to a particular generation (Kaplan & Haenlein, 2010). The growth of SM usage was initially enabled by the launch of Web 2.0 that brought openness and technology democratization through two-way communi cati on. Thi s empowered consumers to search, browse, l earn, buy and contribute knowledge in a transparent, social way. "Social search is based on the premise that the bulk of relevant human knowledge -particularly the community-based, user-generated knowledge K ate Var ini Senior Lecturer, that is highly valued by individual searchers -resides with people and not in the mathematical algorithms associated with normal internet searching" (Drury, 2008).Online shopping has grown very quickly and dominant sales have been for products like leisure and travel, books and CD's, apparel, groceries and consumer electronics. Number of online shoppers are most significant in the UK, Germany and France. Ecommerce opportunities lie in using SM to bypass i ntermediari es and, reduce cost of search engine optimi zati on vi a the introduction of a greater...

Gap Analysis of the Online Reputation

“…While the method for measuring quality has been based on internal surveys of companies carried out among their customers [9], the rise of opinion portals on the Internet has led to a new way of measuring the quality of service in an open way and shared with other users. In addition, the impact on demand is so high that it is critical for managers to guide their decisions to improve their online reputation [3,5,7].The objective of this study is to propose a model to determine the gaps that managers must take into account to achieve an effective reputation on the web. This methodology is designed to improve the analysis and decisions made by practitioners and serve as a source of information for researchers.…”

“…While the method for measuring quality has been based on internal surveys of companies carried out among their customers [9], the rise of opinion portals on the Internet has led to a new way of measuring the quality of service in an open way and shared with other users. In addition, the impact on demand is so high that it is critical for managers to guide their decisions to improve their online reputation [3,5,7].…”

A Rating of the Online Reputation Balance in Lodgings

“…The visibility in Internet and the positioning on key websites such as Booking.com, TripAdvisor, and HolidayCheck influence lodgings' competitiveness. The implications of online customer reviews have been studied in relation to consumer behavior, performance (Rodríguez-Díaz et al 2015;Vermeulen and Seegers 2009;Ye et al 2011;Kim et al 2015;Lee and Ro 2016;Rodríguez-Díaz et al 2018b), price strategies, revenue management (Varini and Sirsi 2012;Yacouel and Fleischer 2012), satisfaction, and the service quality delivery (Ye et al 2014;Hernández Estárico et al 2012;Hu et al 2008;Mudambi and Schuff 2010;Horster and Gottschalk 2012;Chun 2005;Grönroos 2007).…”

Determining the Relationships between Price and Online Reputation in Lodgings

“…The intense exchange of information between customers and companies on the Internet generates an online reputation that directly influences consumer behavior and is a source of competitive advantage (Ye et al 2014;Therkelsen 2003;Yacouel and Fleischer 2012;Chun 2005;Hernández Estárico et al 2012). Likewise, online reputation also affects revenue level, with the relationship existing between price level and online reputation measured through the quality of service scales on websites specializing in the online opinions of tourism customers (Varini and Sirsi 2012;Kim and Park 2017).…”

“…Likewise, Xie et al (2014) concluded in their study that ratings of the hotel's purchase value, location, and cleanliness are the three important attributes that can influence hotel performance. Therefore, the relationship between online reputation and price level has been observed by several authors (Varini and Sirsi 2012;Ye et al 2009;Noone et al 2011;Yacouel and Fleischer 2012;Mauri and Minazzi 2013;Xie et al 2014;Kim and Park 2017). However, there has not been much research on the relationship between prices and the online reputation of accommodations, measured in different ways (e.g., quality of service, value, and added value).…”