The effect of social media communications on travellers’ brand switching intention: an Ecotel's perspective

ABSTRACT

The modern generation is almost addicted to social media. Businesses including Ecotel aim to harness this medium to promote green practices and gain travellers’ patronage. However, limited studies have focused on the role of social media communications in inspiring travellers to choose an Ecotel thus far. To address this gap in the extant literature, we examine the effect of social media communications on travellers’ perceived value and online community engagement, resulting in the travellers’ brand switching intentions. We also examine the mediating role played by perceived value and online community engagement. The results disclose the increasing role of social media communications, online community engagement, and perceived value in shaping travellers’ green choices.

KEYWORDS:

• Ecotel
• online community engagement
• user-generated content
• perceived value
• brand switching intention
• firm-generated content

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Jay Trivedi

Jay P. Trivedi works as an Associate Professor and the Area Leader of Digital Platform and Strategies Area at MICA, Ahmedabad. He teaches multiple courses in the digital marketing and marketing specializations. He has a decade long experience in the industry before joining full time academics in 2013. He has multiple publications in Scopus indexed and ABDC listed journals like Journal of Consumer Behaviour, Journal of Promotion Management, Journal of Internet Commerce, and Journal of Global Scholars of Marketing Science, among others and has also won several best paper awards in international conferences.

Parvinder Arora

Parvinder Arora and Sigma Soni are the FPM scholars at MICA, Ahmedabad. Both the scholars are pursuing their FPM focused on examining the effectiveness of social media marketing.