Breaking Up Is Hard To Do: Why Do Travellers Unlike Travel-Related Organizations?

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Breaking Up Is Hard To Do:Why Do Travellers Unlike

Travel-Related Organizations?

Ulrike Gretzel and Anja Dinhopl

University of Wollongong, Australia

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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)

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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

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Previous Research

Relationship Creation Relationship Maintenance

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

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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

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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

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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.

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Dating Profiles

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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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Reasons for Breaking Up

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

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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

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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.”

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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.”

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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

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Conclusions• Differences between travellers• Different motivations for unliking between

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

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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

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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?

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Thank you!

ugretzel@uow.edu.au