SoCoMo Marketing for Travel and Tourism

Abstract

Advances in mobile technologies have enhanced the capabilities of marketers to identify the immediate preferences of consumers through social media. Latest generation devices are increasingly equipped with sensors that allow the reception of context-aware information about the consumers and their devices. This conceptual paper suggests that the combination of social media and contextaware technologies in mobile devices opens up a whole new range of opportunities for marketing. The paper calls this combination social context mobile (SoCoMo) marketing and offers a first definition. It also proposes a conceptual framework that illustrates the idea of SoCoMo marketing and provides room for a number of implications. It further explores the potential of this new marketing approach for travel and tourism and concludes that there are great prospects for the success of SoCoMo marketing in the near future.

The Impact of E-Wom on Destination Image, Attitude Toward Destination and Travel Intention

“…Especially, the convergence of social media, virtual reality and physical space determines the development pf a new perspective toward mobile social media (MSM) (Minazzi, 2015). The development of mobile devices connected to the Web, along with the convergence of social media, physical space and virtual reality, determines a change of paradigm against Ubiquitous Social Media (USM) (Mandelli and Accoto 2012) or Mobile Social Media (MSM) (Kaplan, 2012;Buhailis and Foerste 2013).…”

Co-construction of the tourist experience in social networking sites: Two forms of authenticity intertwined

“…This is an important point to stress also regarding the literature on ‘co-creation of value’ developed by scholars of tourism management. It means that instead of being only passive recipients of the marketing values of tourism products and services, tourist customers have an active role in creating them (Buhalis and Foerste, 2013; Lugosi, 2014; Oliveira and Panyik, 2015; Rihova et al, 2015; Wozniak et al, 2016).…”

“…There has been a growing interest in the research on social media usage in tourism in the past years (Zeng and Gerritsen, 2014), including studies on selfie-taking (Dinhopl and Gretzel, 2016b; Pearce et al, 2016), post-trip experience sharing (Kim and Fesenmaier, 2015), and tourism destination branding (Buhalis and Foerste, 2013; Oliveira and Panyik, 2015). Younger people have been reported to be more active in using social media for travel planning and experience sharing (Guerra et al, 2015), but it is quite popular among all tourists: more than one-fifth of all international travellers use social media as a travel information source (IPK International, 2015: 35).…”

Tourists’ Attitudes toward Proactive Smartphone Systems

“…This role can be attributed not only to the ubiquity and portability of mobile technology but more so to its various features and functionalities supported by context-aware systems (Gavalas and Kenteris 2011; Kenteris, Gavalas, and Economou 2009; Rasinger et al 2009; Lamsfus et al, forthcoming) that make it highly relevant to the spatiotemporal context of travel (Tussyadiah, Fesenmaier, and Yoo 2008). Studies show that the use of mobile technology allows for activities typically associated with pre-trip and post-trip experiences to be enacted on-site (Buhalis and Foerste 2014; Wang, Xiang, and Fesenmaier 2014). For example, using smartphones, tourists are able to make informed decisions on trip itineraries (i.e., activities to partake in, attractions to visit, etc.)…”