Opening the black box: Examining consumer-brand relationship in brand social networking sites

• Published in: Heritage, Culture and Society: Research agenda and best practices in the hospitality and tourism industry - Proceedings of the 3rd International Hospitality and Tourism Conference, IHTC 2016 and 2nd International Seminar on Tourism, ISOT 2016
• Main Author: Ngelambong A.; Nor N.M.; Omar M.W.; Kibat S.
• Format: Conference paper
• Language: English
• Published: CRC Press/Balkema 2016
• Online Access: https://www.scopus.com/inward/record.uri?eid=2-s2.0-85016230266&partnerID=40&md5=83d66a256471cb445fa37aa13da838f8

Over the past few years, social networking sites are increasingly popular in the area of relationship marketing. It provides the opportunity for brand marketers to extend relationship with their potential and existing consumers in the virtual environment. Still, little research has been done to examine the value of consumer-brand relationship within the scope of social networking sites. To address this gap, the current study examines the relationship value that consumers perceived as a result of befriending hospitality brand in social networking sites. A qualitative study was conducted with four focus groups involving twenty-eight respondents from six hospitality brand Facebook pages. The results indicated that they are five types of relationship benefits in the consumer-brand relationship value, namely information benefit, brand interaction benefit, psychological empowerment benefit, entertainment benefit and economic benefit. Also, respondents expressed concern over privacy and security issue as the main risk of having a relationship with hospitality brand in social networking sites. This article discusses managerial implications of the findings and suggests improvement for future research. © 2016 Taylor & Francis Group, London.