Open AccessSegmentation of Social Media Users for Destinations
Author(s) -
Gökçe Özdemir,
Vesile Aslı Arzık
Publication year - 2021
Publication title -
tourism
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
eISSN - 1849-1545
pISSN - 1332-7461
DOI - 10.37741/t.70.1.4
Subject(s) - social media , market segmentation , segmentation , identification (biology) , destinations , advertising , computer science , marketing , hierarchical clustering , tourism , business , cluster analysis , sociology , world wide web , artificial intelligence , geography , botany , archaeology , biology
This is a study into the segmentation of social media users interested in traveling into groups and aims to ascertain if differences exist in benefits among segments. It is based on a survey that examines the benefits they see social media as having before, during, and after a trip to a destination, using their responses to generate a data-driven segmentation. Data from a total of 218 questionnaires were analyzed using factor and cluster analysis in sequence, specifically applying a hierarchical cluster analysis using the Ward method and a K-means algorithm. The analysis led to the identification of four useful types of social media user: info-seeker, communication-seeker, interaction-seeker, and hybrid segments, each of which seeks different things from social media and use it in different ways (e.g., to seek information, tosee what other people have said about a destination, or to post their ownexperiences). As such, the implications of our findings offer useful insightsfor both scholars and destination marketers, highlighting the significance ofoffering appropriate marketing strategies for each type of segment.