Consumers and Social Media

¶ … social media of hotel industry influence consumer purchasing behavior 24/09/2015

Prominent examples of social media

Business Use of Social Media

Social media and consumer purchasing

Role of Social media in Advertising and Marketing

Social Media Marketing

Evidence of importance of Social Media Marketing

Impact of Social Media Marketing on Consumer Purchasing Behavior

The Herding Effect

Theory of Social Impact

Social Media Influence Factors on Consumers

Social Media in the Hotel Industry

Social media and Thailand Hotels

Approaches to Methodology

Outline of research Method

Sample selection and Size

Questionnaire Design

Obstacles in Research

: Data Analysis

: Ethical Considerations in Research

: Limitations of the study

Results and Analysis

: Results from Survey of Hotel subscribers

: Results from Survey of Hotel Marketing Officials

Inference from the Analysis

Social Media Factors Affecting Customer Purchasing Behavior 39

5.2: Recommendations for Managers for Use of Social Media 40

References 43

Chapter 1: Introduction

1.1 Introduction

Virtual internet-based communities, networks and groups that develop between users of computer-mediated tools and which enables users to create, share and exchange information, ideas, and pictures or videos is defined as social networks (Kaplan and Haenlein, 2010).

According to social researcher Dhiraj Murty, social media is:

"Social media has been broadly defined to refer to 'the many relatively inexpensive and widely accessible electronic tools that enable anyone to publish and access information, collaborate on a common effort, or build relationships' (Strippel, 2014).

Social media is completely based on web-based technologies and computer devices and other devices like smartphones, tabs etc. which are used to create highly interactive platforms where members and non-members are able to view, post, share debate, communicate with each other and sometimes even modify content (Kietzmann et al., 2011).

In social media the content is thought of, conceived and created by the user for the user. Social media has become a mode of communication not only for the members and users of a particular group or community but for also provides substantial opportunities for firms, companies, business organizations and not for profit organizations to communicate and share messages and attempt to influence the viewers and users of social media (Atzmueller and Lemmerich, 2013).

In terms of reach, frequency, usability, immediacy and permanence, social media differs from conventional media used for communication. The major advantages of this media is that it allows for two way communication and often simultaneous communications between a number of people and this happens in real time (Todwal and M. Wanjari, 2015).

1.2: Prominent examples of social media

The major forms of social media that are popular among the users include:

Facebook -- a free to use networking website where users can create profiles, upload photos and video, send messages and keep in touch with friends, family and colleagues.

Twitter -- this is a free for all micro blogging website where users can create a twitter handle or an identity and express their views and react to views expressed by other within a limited number of words. These short posts are called tweets.

Google+ - this is another platform where people can interact for free after registering with Google.

LinkedIn -- this is a social networking site targeted for the business community at large where registered members can create professional profiles and interact for professional reasons.

Reddit -- this website allows stories to be socially created and promoted by site members and the sub-communities, known as "subreddits" have one specific topic of discussion which can range from technology to politics to music to sports.

Pinterest -- this website allows sharing and posting of mages and pictures online with a brief description for each picture but with the primary focus on the visual.

1.3: Business Use of Social Media

Social media is growing and is fast becoming a tool for the business community and organizations to market products and service and promote brands, connect and communicate to the current customers and interact to attract new business and through new customers (King and Li, 2012).

Business organizations can use social media in a number of ways. Business organizations can themselves or through outsourcing and experts, gather data from blogs and social media websites and analyze the data to make business decisions. Mining of customer sentiments to create and register support for marketing and customer service activities is one of the most common use of social media analytics.

Companies and firms can also use the social media networking and various communities to enable the firm to increase brand exposure and extend the customer reach. This is known as social media marketing (SMM) which is aimed to compel users to share promotional or non-promotional content created by the company or firm (Pavlik and McIntosh, 2011).

Business organizations can also create strategies that are able to draw new and unique visitors to a website and increase website traffic through communication of effective and interesting content on social networking sites. This is known as social media optimization. This can be achieved by adding social media links to content and by promoting promotional activities on the social media by making interesting status updates, tweets and blog posts.

The use of review spaces and websites are gaining importance. These are places where users and customers can place their views and experience of various products and services. This is also a place where the business organizations can present their side of a case to refute or applaud a review or post by a consumer (Aaker, Smith and Adler, 2010).

1.4: Social media and consumer purchasing

It is growing trend that customer and consumers follow the social media for brands and knowing and sharing of personal experience and products and services. Consumers use social media with respect to products and services for:

Learning more about products and services

Know and understand the trends in the markets

View, review and post their feedback about products and services

Be a part of fan communities of brands and products

Leverage promotions and sweepstakes

And to finally gain enough data and information to decide on a purchase (Li, 2013)

1.5: Significance of the Study

Social media has gained tremendous popularity especially among the youth and the millennial population. People are glued to social media and with the advent of the smart phones and the enhancement of technologies for internet connection, users can now access social media from anywhere. This has presented an opportunity for the business organizations to use the social media to communicate with the consumers and influence the consumers to make purchases. This study deals with the ways the hotel industry can exert influence on the consumers through communication on the social networking sites. The study assumes importance as this form of customer alluring is becoming more important with the developments in communication technology.

1.6: The Research question

The study would attempt to get answers to the following research questions:

What factors of social media influence the purchasing behavior of consumers of the hotel industry?

How the hotel industry can best use social media to attract and influence customers with specific focus on Thailand?

1.7: Aims and Objectives of the research

The aims and objectives of the research is to find out several concepts regarding the impact of social media on consumers in Thailand hotel industry. One of the aims is finding out the current marketing trends in Thailand hotel industry that make use of social media. The study would try and measuring the scope of social media dominance in influencing customer behavior.

Chapter 2: Literature Review

2.1 Role of Social media in Advertising and Marketing

Social media is defined as the virtual internet-based communities, networks and groups that develop between users of computer-mediated tools and which enables users to create, share and exchange information, ideas, and pictures or videos is defined as social networks.

Social media is completely based on web-based technologies and computer devices and other devices like smartphones, tabs etc. which are used to create highly interactive platforms where members and non-members are able to view, post, share debate, communicate with each other and sometimes even modify content.

There are three basic points of agreement that have been decided upon by researchers that can define social media, even though a perfect definition of the social media is not possible.

Social media can be defined, based on the three points, as a medium of communication that are web-based technologies enabled through the internet and comprises of content that tare created and provided by the users that tends to emphasize dialogues and relationships among users of a community within a particular social media application (Ghosh, Varshney and Venugopal, 2014).

The sheer number of social media tools that are available to date is a challenge in understanding the social media According to Dijkmans, Kerkhof and Beukeboom, (2015), there was no categorization and structure definition attempt for the social media (Dijkmans, Kerkhof and Beukeboom, 2015) until 2007 when the former Microsoft employee and celebrity blogger Robert Scoble (2007) was the first to try and map the social media landscape (Burke, Martin and Cooper, 2011).

Grutzmacher categorized the social media according to the various social media tools and their most popular services. Such categories of the social media include:

Blog -- this is a short form for weblog that is a sequential online diary others can comment on (Weber, 2007).

Collaborative Tools -- these comprise of open-source software products like Linux or Firefox, the framework for which are uploaded on the web and can be jointly developed and contributed (Khosrow-Pour, 2002)

Events -- people can upload videos or pictures of events and share them such as popular listening services, such as iTunes (Evans, 2008).

Forums -- people are able to post questions and react to others' questions and comments that include website applications like Yahoo and AOL.

Microblogs -- these are similar to traditional blogs except that the sentences are shorter or phrases only often limited to 140 characters. The most powerful such tool is Twitter with a user base of 75 million people (Theinquirer.net, 2015)

Personal Social Networks -- these applications allow users to build personal websites and meet like-minded people. One of the most popular service providers of social networks is Facebook,

Photo and Video Sharing -- websites that allow organization and sharing of content in form of photos and videos like Flickr and YouTube.

Podcast -- this form of social media allows the spread of audio and video files through RSS feed

Reviews and Ratings -- allows consumers to air their views and opinions about companies and are considered important tools for companies to judge consumer sentiments through the opinion or the appraisals of product's position on a scale.

White label social networks -- closed groups of a particular brand like those of Apple's iTunes store or Nokia's Ovi store.

Researcher D. Evans (2008) concluded, based on the above classifications of the social media, that social media essentially is comprised of a number of different activities that included activities like video sharing, texting, blogging, etc. and the activities and combination of tools the audience is attracted to decided the effectiveness of the tools while stressing on the exchange of dialogues and relationships among users of a community (Evans, 2008).

Researcher C. Li (2010) categorized the social media into five categories according to the activities that can be helpful for companies to understand, identify and utilize a particular aspect of social media for reputation building (Li, 2010).

2.2: Social Media Marketing

This is form of marketing exercise that is employed by business organizations to its achieve marketing communication and branding goals through the implementation and engagement of various social media networks. Activities involving the social sharing of content, videos and images for marketing purposes of an organization are the primary method for social media marketing.

Social media marketing can help business organizations to:

Increase website traffic to its company website

Can enable conversions of customers from other brands and products

Can enhance brand awareness

Help create a brand identity and positive brand association

Helps in direct and real time communication and interaction with key audiences

While undertaking social media marketing exercise business organizations need to engage in a proper plan of the entire exercise that includes deciding on content and the channels of social media to be used. The content that is put on the social media would ultimately decide the success of marketing campaigns and hence the content needs to be effective and engaging.

While engaging in social media marketing, business organizations also need to maintain a consistent brand image that is core to the company or firm. It is also essential to keep a track of what the competitors are doing in the same field and adjusting the marketing plan accordingly. Period inspection needs to be done about the success of the social media marketing campaign through analysis of the results

Companies like Skittles and Dell have been able to get market leverage through the successful use of the social media by creating effective marketing masterpieces and have managed to increase their sales, brand and the community around their products. Even small companies have leveraged themselves using social media marketing and marketing tools to increases sales.

Marketing attempts through social media essentially entails driving sales through building traffic to the company website, hiring of employees, building a community and creating a positive and well-known brand.

However marketing attempts through social media require the establishment of a framework for the strategy of content creation and distribution as well as communication with users and prospective customers.

The measurement of the return on the investments made in terms of time, human resources and money are important to gauge the success of marketing campaign. Such assessment can be mad from the increase in traffic to websites, number of positive comments and reviews made and an estimate of the actual conversion of online queries into sales.

2.3: Evidence of importance of Social Media Marketing

Social media marketing has become a topic of research interest and several studies and researches have been conducted in this aspect that provides an insight in to the importance and growth of social media marketing.

Economic struggles has been identified as a catalyst for social media's rapid popularity has been in a recent study titled "The State of Small Business Report," by Network Solutions, LLC and the University of Maryland's Robert H. Smith School of Business.

The use of small business using social media to market itself and its products has risen from a mere 12% a few years back to more than 35% in recent years and the use of social media has been incorporated into the marketing strategy of the companies and firms.

The study also segregated the use of social media by the companies where it claimed that 75% of the companies engaging in social media activities have a company page on a social networking site while 69% of them post status updates or articles of interest on social media sites. 57% of the companies use sites like LinkedIn to build and 54% are in the habit of monitoring feedback about the business on social network sites.

The report also claimed that 39% maintain a blog sit, 26% of the companies tweet about areas of expertise and 16% of them use Twitter as a service channel.

The way and the rate at which different companies use social media for marketing, depends on the company type and the business type. However the report also stated that there were a section of business organizations that are yet to prioritize the use of social networking sites and the social media for marketing and promotional purposes ( Ioanas, 2012).

A recent report by the Chief Marketing Officer Council World Wide more than $16.10 billion was spent in social media marketing by companies globally in 2014 which is a 45.3% increase from the figures in 2013. The overall digital advertisement investment for the year 2014 was 11.5% of the advertisement budgets of companies globally.

In January of 2015, the combined social network ad revenues from the regions of North America, Western Europe and Asia-Pacific contribute to 93.7% of the global expenditure.

The largest share of online spend by business organizations would be made in search engine marketing (SEM) in 2015 which will account for 47% of the digital ad spends by global business, says the report. This is about 14% of a company's total marketing budget for the year 2014.

Digital marketing and advertisement spending have increased on devices like smart phones and tablets as more consumers run local searches on such devices. The U.S. mobile ad spending on local, or location-targeted, placements, according to BIA/Kelsey estimates, would increase by more than 56% in 2015 to reach a total of $6.7 billion which in turn is 37% of all the mobile ad revenues that are spent.

According to the report, while 53% of senior marketers are focusing on social media community growth and engagement and spending a significant part of their budget on it, 69% of them are focusing on efficient website content with most of the digital budget being spend towards it.

These figures above leave no scope for doubt about the rising growth and importance to the business world attaches to the marketing effort in social media.

2.4: Impact of Social Media Marketing on Consumer Purchasing Behaviour

The significant spending that the global business is doing for digital advertisement and promotion and marketing activities is not without reason. Research has proved that in the modern world of internet communication and in the social media age, consumers can be influenced through efficient use of marketing, promotional and branding exercise and ultimately the purchasing behavior of consumers can be influenced (Balakrishnan, Dahnil and Yi, 2014).

2.4.1: The Herding Effect

The herding effect is a phenomenon whereby, consumers will rely on the appeal of the masses in the social media to making purchasing decisions. The service provider cannot control the herding effect; instead, they can only change its effect on the consumers. Consumers cannot prefer a brand that has negative publicity in the social media (Huang and Chen, 2006). A service provider cannot stop people in the social media from sharing about the disadvantages they have experienced with using a product or subscribing to a service. Therefore, consumers play a significant role in influencing each other's purchasing behavior through the social media. The herding effect will influence the sales volume and the number of negative and positive customer reviews. The research proposed is primarily aimed at determining the extent of the herding effect on consumer behavior (Goldsmith and Horowitz, 2006).

Consumers will follow the opinions of other consumers to make a purchase. Sometimes the consumers make misinformed decisions when they rely on purchases made by other consumers before. Many consumers do not trust their information. They think that other consumers have the valid and reliable information about a product or a service (Gavriilidis, Kallinterakis and Tsalavoutas, n.d.).

2.4.2: Theory of Social Impact

The theory of social impact speculates that people have a tendency of disregarding their personal opinions and appealing to the masses (Latane, 1981). Such behaviors are not considered as weaknesses but a form of logic. It is stereotyped that the majority is always correct. Therefore, people find it hard to trust their points-of-view when everyone else thinks otherwise. Consumers are the most affected and moved by the masses. A person will prefer a product or a service that is being used by the majority. Consumers minimize the risk of making misinformed decisions when they choose what many people choose (Parsons and Moffat, 2014). Sometimes, consumers are caught up in random purchases where they do not have the time to gather information and make informed decisions. Therefore, they eventually make a purchase about what many people have been purchasing. Bibb Latane in 1981 came up with the social impact theory arguing that when people influence an individual, the impact spreads to more people (Latane, 1981).

2.5.3: Social Media Influence Factors on Consumers

Wide spread access to information, aided by internet and virtual communities has transformed the consumers, societies, and corporations. This transformation has been compounded by better social networking and enhanced communication abilities (Kucuk and Krishnamurthy, 2007).

An internet medium that link millions of users across the globe that have the same interests, views and hobbies is defined as social networks and the mediums include blogs, YouTube, MySpace and Facebook (Sin, et al., 2012).

The social media networks are used to share ideas about a given product, service or brand as the users get in contact with other consumers who are often considered to be more objective information sources (Kozinets, 2002). The forms of communication between the consumers include blogs, podcasts, social networks, bulletin boards and wikis.

According to Hanna, Rohn and Crittenden, (2011), marketing practices such as advertising and promotion have been transformed and revolutionized by the unique character of social media and the immense popularity of this new age media (Hanna, Rohn and Crittenden, 2011)

The purchasing behavior of consumers have also been influenced by social network site and social media from the way consumers gather information to post purchase behavior which are often expressed on social media sites in the form of dissatisfaction statements or behaviors about a product or a company (Mangold and Faulds, 2009). While companies and business organizations strive to engage and interact with potential consumers, encourage an increased sense of intimacy with consumers, and build all important relationships with potential consumers, the social media has been instrumental in changing the way consumers decide on their purchase.

The rise in the number of review slots and sites about products and services are a great place for consumers to collect reviews and personal experiences of other consumers. People who have decided to buy a product these days pay serious attention to what other consumers of the same product have to say about the product.

While peer pressure and suggestions from near and close people is known to influence the purchasing behavior and the ultimate decision of purchase, in a similar manner the social media acts as a peer and provides consumers with valuable information, mostly from gathered from personal experience or relating experience of someone close about a product or a service that the consumer plans to or intends to purchase (Steps to social marketing success, 2013).

Moreover, since consumers, particularly the youth and the millennial population of the world are glued to social media sites and networks they tend to value the view and opinion of other in the network. While making a purchase, the modern consumer is in the habit of asking for peer opinion and reviews about certain products or services that are intended to be purchased. Hence similar to the time when a consumer would ask for an d value the opinion of the near and dear one -- say for example the family members or close friends, in a similar manner, consumers are also attaching importance to what their friends on the social network communities say about a product or service (Adopting a social media policy in practice, 2014).

This makes the positive reviews and opinions expressed on social media about a product or service critical for the modern purchaser. This is also a chance for companies to stimulate positive reviews and create positive feedback and engage with the consumers through effective content to influence the purchasing behavior of consumers.

A good and effective branding campaign or a communication blitz by a business organization on the social media would be able to create an influence on the prospective consumers to a far greater extent than is perhaps possible through the traditional marketing techniques and medium (Kaplan and Haenlein, 2010).

The fact that consumers are influenced by communication on social media sites is evident from several studies that have been conducted in recent years.

A significant number of companies in the top 100 companies of the world had a profile on Facebook (79%), Twitter (69%) or both (59%), claimed a study by Internet Retailer in 2009. (Emarketer.com, 2009).

That the consumers are influenced by social media communication by companies was revealed in another study of Deloitte Touche' USA which brought out the fact that 62% of U.S. consumers were in the habit of reading consumer generated online reviews here as 98% of such consumers found such peer reviews them to be reliable enough tohel them decide to make purchases. The same study found that 80% of the consumers were influenced with regards to their purchasing decision by reading the social media reviews (Pookulangaran, et al., 2011).

Social media is used by consumers in their daily lives for many reasons. The primary among them is the attempt to maintain relationships with relatives or colleagues and friends in a manner that such relationships provide benefits by giving social support, friendship, and intimacy (Dholakia, Bagozzi and Pearo, 2004). Therefore the existence of virtual peer groups and friends is almost like having them in the real world (Ahuja, 2003). Hence it can be concluded that social media groups and communications on the social media influence on the behavior and consumer buying intent and implicitly on the purchase decision among existing as well as prospective customers form the business organization's point-of-view (Kozinets et al., 2010).

2.5: Social Media in the Hotel Industry

For the hotel and hospitality industry, the uniqueness of the social media presents several opportunities to interact with and attract customers. The uniqueness of the users created content and networking groups and communities on social media offers opportunities for a platform for a rating system which can effectively utilized to generate, monitor and evaluate the create and enhance brand image and reputation of the hotels (Kasavana, 2008)

Consumers tend to pay special attention to consumer generated online content which is also perceived by consumers to be more credible than the information that is distributed by the hospitality entity (D. Parker, 2012).

The engagement of the entities from the hospitality industry has been proven to be a cost-effective means for interaction, engagement and attracting potential clients and customers. The cost effectiveness is evident as hotels and other entities form the hospitality industry can join as many social networking websites as desired without the need to add much additional hardware or software and without spending much money in investments which is unlike what happens with the traditional means and modes of marketing.

Participants are able to engage in a unique number of ways as the social networking sites are easily accessible and are straightforward and appealing. This had driven many hotels, restaurants and travel business to engage with customers and consumers through the social media network (Cox, Burgess, Sellitto and Buultjens 2009).

The hotels are utilizing the social networking sites to offer innovative and customized solutions for consumers and much responsive and prompt customer service in an effort to enhance corporate image, draw more customers and increase customers satisfaction. For example, many hotels are creating special applications where the customers can choose their own rooms and services even before stepping into hotels.

Social media offers a lucrative opportunity for hotels to engage with consumers through pictures and videos that can act as sources of attraction for consumers and prospective customers (Kasavana, Nusair and Teodosic, 2010).

Hoteliers are also engaging and taking advantage of the online consumer review spaces that are available in social sites which is believed to play a big part in the decision of the consumers choosing hotels and travel arrangements in the modern day (Thevenot, 2007).

Social sites where travelers can share their experience and views like Yelp, TripAdvisor and social networking sites such as Facebook, MySpace are gaining popularity. Like in many other industries and business where consumers use social media sites to look at peer reviews and comments about products and services, travelers to are engaging more and more in such reviews about hotel products and services as well as price comparisons to be take an ultimate decision (Lee, 2011). Therefore social media engagement for the hospitality industry is as important as any other service and product oriented business in today's world.

2.6: Social media and Thailand Hotels

The hotels in Thailand have a great opportunity to utilize the social media to market their products and services. With a population of 67.9 million, there are 53 million active internet users with a total of 30.0 million social media users (http://syndacast.com/, 2015). Thailand has 30 million Facebook subscribers followed by YouTube at 26.2 million subscribers and twitter and Instagram at 4.5 million and 1.7 million respectively (Vichienwanitchkul, 2015).

The above figures show that Thailand hotels have a very wide domestic audience. If the active social media users all across the world are taken into account then the opportunity for the hotel industry of Thailand to utilize social media for marketing is immense.

Chapter 3: Research Methodology

3.1: Introduction

The process that is used by researchers to collect information and data about an issue or a topic so that the research can be concluded and the researcher can arrive at a decision is termed as methodology. Both primary and secondary research methods are included in research methodology. However other forms of gathering and collecting information can also be undertaken (International Journal of Social Research Methodology: Theory & Practice, 2012).

Methodology is also known as the process of systematic and theoretical application and analysis of data. The basis of research methodology is the analysis of the methods and the principles that are used in a study of a particular issue or a field of study. Issues like the paradigm of a subject or an issue, the possible models of theories and the approach to quantitative and qualitative techniques comprise methodology (Weinberg, 2002).

Methodology explains the approach that is taken for a research. A single method or a conglomeration of a number of methods can make up methodology. The best method or a combination of methods that can be best suited for a research is identified by methodology and helps a researcher to pin point the best method.

3.2: Approaches to Methodology

There are two basic approaches to research methodology - quantitative and qualitative approaches.

Quantitative approach: this is defined as the research approach that takes the help of the paradigm concept of positivist and post-positivist approach. The basis of quantitative approach is also based on the post-positivist view. The primary format of this approach comprises of the physical collection of primary and secondary data with the aim of converting those data into the statistical forms. Statistical and mathematical methods are then used to analyze the data thus collected to arrive at a conclusion (Weinberg, 2002).

The personal behavior or attitude of the researcher does not create bias in the data collection or in the analysis of the data collected is necessary for this approach to research is ensured by the maintenance of objectivity during the data collection period as well as during the analysis.

Qualitative approach: the use of the social constructivist concept that focuses on the reality which is socially constructed as the prime basis of a research is described as qualitative research. This approach to methodology is primarily aimed to understand the human behavior and the experiences that the human have undergone. Apart from statistical data evaluation, this approach uses active consideration of the human emotions and behavior (Liamputtong, 2009).

This approach also attempts to understand the complex nature of the human behavior while attempting the unraveling the complexities associated with human emotions. No scope for unraveling and expressing the emotions of the respondents is left by the use of statistical data and analysis in quantitative research approach. On the other hand a greater degree of freedom to express their emotions is allowed to the researchers by the qualitative approach.

3.3: Outline of research Method

The research is conducted with the aim of finding out the qualitative impact of social media on consumers with respect to the hotel industry of Thailand through the understanding of some qualitative matrices like cost impact and the information flow in social media about hotels and their products and services.

The quantitative method would be used for the collection of primary data about how hotel marketing officials and consumers make use of and are affected by social media. This quantitative aspect would be undertaken through a survey among a section of the customers and the marketing officials of hotels.

Professional survey tool would be used for the survey through a set of questionnaires that was sent via e-mail.

The positivist philosophical position formed the basis of the selection of the quantitative research approach to objectively find out about the influence of e-commerce on retail trade.

The study used both deductive and inductive approaches to the research:

Deductive Approach: a deductive approach for a research is defined as a study that starts with a general point-of-view and then goes on to analyze data from secondary sources to arrive at a particular point-of-view.

Secondary information was gathered and collected from various literary sources available in the public domain forms the basis of the approach. By logically following the available facts in the public domain, the research aims to (Welman et al., 2005).

Inductive Approach: a result is obtained through empirical observations in this approach. The data generally collected from primary sources through interviews and face-to-face interactions or surveys form the data and the information that are analyzed to arrive at a conclusion. Data is analyzed to arrive at the conclusion and forming of a theory in this approach after information is gathered through generalized observations.

The study used commonly available statistical tools to assimilate and analyze data that was gathered from the survey. The data was then represented in statistical forms of graphs and charts to better understand the qualitative aspect of the numerical values taken in relation to the influence of social media on consumers.

3.4: Data collection

Both primary and secondary data collection methods were employed for the research. Analysis of primary and secondary data was done to arrive at a result in the research and the research used and paid equal importance to secondary and primary data and their analysis. Primary data was collected through surveys of retailers using e-commerce either on common platforms or as additional business models to their brick and mortar stores.

The survey had closed and open ended questions for the retailers and the questionnaire were self-filling where the respondents answered the question themselves. The Likert scale was used that allowed to uncover degrees of opinion on the topic and had ranges on both sides of a mean. Most of the questions had to be ranked between 'strongly agree' and 'strongly disagree'.

There were also open ended questions that tried to bring out a qualitative aspect form the respondents.

Various research papers, published work and surveys already done on the subject that are available in the public domain were used to collect secondary data. The internet was used to collect such secondary data about the issue. Data was also collected about how the consumers viewed e-commerce had impacted retail trade and how they had benefitted from the new form of business as found in various surveys.

Reputed universities, books published by reputed publishers and journals of well-known organizations were selected for collection of secondary data for authorized information as these are considered to be credible and authoritative sources. Such data were collected that have been useful in increasing knowledge about the issue of transfer of learning and data that were of recent nature. Relevance to the issue was also kept in focus while selecting secondary data sources.

3.5: Sample selection and Size

Sampling is the method that is adopted to select a group of elements from a larger target population to do a survey. Many different techniques are used for sampling. A questionnaire is often used for a sample survey for the sampled people to answer. After a target sample is selected, there are also different ways of doing a survey. The aim of sampling is to reduce cost and the time of survey as sampling is to represent a larger target group. The results of the sample survey can be extrapolated to represent the characteristics of the entire target group since a sample is usually representative.

The stratified random sampling method was used for the research where the researcher divided the population into strata based on the age, location, usage of social etc. and selected respondents accordingly. This method was chosen to highlight a specific subgroup within the population and to ensure that representation of each of the subgroups were made in the sample. This allows the representative sampling of the users of e-commerce by retailers and through this method the rare extremes of the given population were reached. This technique gave the research higher statistical precision compared to simple random sampling (Samuels, Biddle and Emmett, 2009).

3.6: Questionnaire Design

Questionnaires are designed in the written format with a set of questions that have possible answers, sometimes in multiple choice formats, for the purpose of collecting data from the interviewees (Sapsford, 2006).

The deductions of critical literature review formed the basis of preparation of such questionnaire (Lavrakas, 2008).

In this research, the first part of the questionnaire attempted to provide a definition of social media as understood by the respondents which was based on definitions derived from study of literature. The defining of the term would enable the respondents to have a clear idea about the legal definition of social media.

The last part of the questionnaire was designed on the basis of the closed format. The five probable answers-agree, strongly agree, neither agree nor disagree, disagree, strongly disagree, were given points for analysis purposes. The questions were designed to bring out the respondent's attitude to various aspects related to influence of social media on consumer behavior. The coding of the answers gave the researcher the advantage to tabulate and analyze the data.

3.7: Obstacles in Research

The prime obstacle in the research was the sample size was very big and largely undefined. Since the sample size is very large therefore it was not possible for the researcher to reach out to one and everyone. Hence a representative sample, based on the judgment of the research, was chosen for the research. Also there were many among the chosen respondents who later refused to participate citing busy schedules and hence there was need to look for more respondents to complete the survey.

3.8: Data Analysis

The research used two methods of data analysis-quantitative analysis technique for the survey and the qualitative method for the analysis of the secondary data. The qualitative data that was collected through the survey was transformed into statistical form for better understanding. Each of the questions had several values attached to them. The analysis took note of the value for each answer from a particular respondent and converted into statistical data by combining it with all similar questions from all the respondents.

For expressing trends in answers, for example through percentage representation of a similar type of answer among the total respondents, the statistical data then collected were transformed into other forms. In order to relate certain aspects like the preferred site for price comparison, the time spent in hotels and the importance of customer review, some cross tabulations were utilized.

Qualitative analysis-this analysis was primarily done from the data that was collected through the literature review. The qualitative aspects that would be derived from the data was used to identify the emotions that are associated with customers and the hoteliers who use the social media for price comparison and conducting reviews.

3.9: Ethical Considerations in Research

Some norms and regulations and ethical considerations need to be followed for every research work. These are norms that have been developed over the years for research (Pimple, 2008).

The respondents had participated voluntarily and were requested to answer the survey through e-mail for the survey. The respondents were assured in writing that the information that was gathered from the survey would not be used in any other form except for the research and the respondents were allowed to end the interview whenever they wished.

Proper credit was given to publish and non-copyrighted works available in the public domain and all data protection norms for internet sources were maintained for secondary research data collection. Appropriate information was given to the concerned agencies and publishers about their work being used in the research wherever needed.

3.10: Limitations of the study

The factors that arise from the research design or methodology and which have the tendency to influence the outcome and interpretation of a research are termed as the limitations of a study or research. Both internal factors as well as external factors are responsible for limiting a research work.

In this research the limitations were:

The sample size: the choice of the sample for primary data was one of the most important considerations as the results can be affected by the disadvantages associated with the method of sample selection. It is generally argued that too small a sample cannot be representative of the entire population (Kalof, Dan and Dietz, 2008).

Personal Bias: there can be limitations to the study arising from the personal bias of the researcher. However all possible measures in this research were taken to ensure that there was no personal bias in involved.

Chapter 4: Results and Analysis

This chapter would discuss the findings from survey of the hotel subscribers and the survey of the marketing managers of hotels.

4.1: Results from Survey of Hotel subscribers

The survey was conducted among 100 people of which the majority were females (65%) and the rest were males. More than half of the respondents surveyed were between the age group of 20 and 25 years while 34% were between the age group of 206 and 30 years. The respondents between age group of 31 and 40 were 8% and the rest were above 41 years of age. This signifies that the survey was conducted mostly among respondents who are expected to be heavy users of internet and members or users of social networking sites. This was done to have as many of the respondents as possible who are used to net surfing on a regular basis and had the most chance of being users of social networking sites.

The majority of the respondents surveyed belonged to the average income group. Half of the respondents earned between 20,000 and 50,000 THB per month while 31% of the respondents earned below 20,000 THB per month. The high income group constituted only 19% of the people surveyed.

Almost all the respondents (91%) said that they used hotel services for less than once in a month. Thus indicates that the majority of the respondents was probably tourists and checked into hotels primarily when they were on vacations. The 8% of the respondents who said that they checked into a hotel at least two times a month were probably the executive class who used hotels to stay in when they travelled for work and even on vacations. Just 1% of the respondent said that they used hotel services more than twice a week.

The type of hotel customer was an important data to understand the purchasing habit of the respondents. 61% of the respondents said that they choose and booked hotels via online booking systems which means that they are the ones who first check and review hotels online and book online without ever visiting the hotel or seeing the hotel in real life except when they actually landed on the hotel.

17% of the respondents used the telephone to book a hotel and took the help of telecallers for booking. 11% each of the respondents were walk in customers and customers who booked hotels via travel agencies or hotel booking agencies.

This data indicates that most of the respondents surveyed use the internet to book hotel rooms and avail hotel services and they are the ones that dependent on the internet information to choose and book a hotel. This is trend that needs to be noted for future reference and analysis.

The question about the platform that the online booking customers use for hotel booking is also an important data that would reveal a trend and purchasing behavior of the hotel subscribers. As already revealed form secondary sources that there are two basic ways which through online booking for hotels can be done -- one is the hotel website itself and other are social sites and network that helps customers gain information about hotels which are mostly comparative in nature.

The survey analysis shows that an over whelming percentage (77%) of the respondents used online search engines that automatically compared hotel prices. This would include social networking sites were the respondents could even look into the views and reviews about various hotels relate dot the service after comparing the prices of such hotels.

The next question was related to the type of search engine used by the respondents. 80% of the respondents said that they used either Booking.com or Agoda.com -- both online websites to compare and book hotels all across the globe but specifically in Asia and the Middle East. The rest of the respondents used other online sites like hotel.com, Expedia and Tripadvisor.

While using the social networking sites and the online sites to compare and book hotels, the respondents attached the most importance to obtaining the correct information about the price that they would pay for hotel bookings. 35% of the respondents surveyed paid the least importance to price and instead attached importance to other considerations.

Service quality seemed to be of the least importance for 37% of the respondents using online services to compare hotel products and services. Only 17% of the respondents attached more than 90% importance to services. This indicates that while comparing hotel information online, most of the respondents look for competitive prices while accepting average services.

The respondents using online platforms for comparing hotels in Thailand indicated that average importance was paid to appearances of hotels. While 17% of the respondents attached utmost importance of appearance, 20% attached least importance. The rest of the respondents attached average importance to appearance while comparing hotels online.

The majority of the respondents (62%) accorded the location of the hotel to be have an importance of more than 50%. This means that while at least 62% of the respondents compared hotels they looked for price, services and location as the most important factors while they made comparison on hotels and made the ultimate decision on purchase.