The Impact of Social Media on the Consumer Decision Process: Implications for Tourism Marketing

ABSTRACT

Social media have fundamentally changed the consumer decision process, and in the last decade a more sophisticated view of how consumers engage with brands has emerged. This research note describes this new consumer decision journey with examples from all sectors of the travel industry, and describes how savvy tourism marketers are benefiting from social media engagement. Practical and theoretical implications are discussed along with suggestions for further research in this rapidly changing digital environment.

Keywords:

• Social media
• consumer decision journey
• travel sector

Acknowledgments

The authors are grateful to the anonymous reviewers for offering valuable comments on an earlier version of this article.