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Journal of Vacation Marketing
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DOI: 10.1177/1356766712449366
2012 18: 197Journal of Vacation Marketing
Yumi Lim, Yeasun Chung and Pamela A Weaver
marketer-generated videos
The impact of social media on destination branding: Consumer-generated videos versus destination
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Article
The impact of social media
on destination branding:
Consumer-generated
videos versus destination
marketer-generated videos
Yumi Lim
Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University (Virginia Tech), USA
Yeasun Chung
Oklahoma State University, USA
Pamela A Weaver
Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University (Virginia Tech), USA
Abstract
A one-way conversation with consumers in destination branding was pervasive when destinationmarketing
organizations created and generated their destination brands. However, social media has
made a two-way conversation possible with consumers participating in the development of a destination
brand identity/image. This study investigates consumer perception of destination brands created
by consumer-generated videos and destination-marketing organization videos. The findings suggest
that consumer-generated videos do not carry the same destination brand as destination marketergenerated
videos. In addition, consumer-generated videos have little positive impact on a destination
brand. This study provides insight into destination-branding strategies with respect to the roles that
social media plays in creating destination-brand identity and image.
Keywords
Consumer-generated content, destination branding, marketer-generated content, social media, twoway
communication
Introduction
Traditionally, destination branding was created
and generated by destination-marketing organizations
(DMOs) (Blain et al., 2005) to create a
positive image and differentiate their destinations
from other destinations (Cai, 2002; Gnoth
et al., 2007). Therefore, unique logos and slogans
of destinations have been created by DMOs (Lee
et al., 2006); this translates into a one-way conversation
with the consumer. However, the emergence
of the Internet has altered the environment
encompassing the marketing mix (Dev et al.,
2010). Methods of marketing communication
have been forced to change with the advent of the
Internet and social media, for example, Facebook,
Twitter, and YouTube (Dev et al., 2010).
Specifically, social media has become a powerful
source of ‘‘word of mouth’’ communication.
Since social media provides sites for
consumers to share their experiences and opinions
with others, it can have a positive influence
Corresponding author:
Yumi Lim, Department of Hospitality and Tourism
Management, Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State
University, 362 Wallace Hall (0429), Blacksburg, VA 24061,
USA
Email: yumi@vt.edu
Journal of Vacation Marketing
18(3) 197–206
ª The Author(s) 2012
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DOI: 10.1177/1356766712449366
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on consumers if there are satisfied customers or a
negative influence on others if there are unsatisfied
customers (Trusov et al., 2009). In addition,
social media influences the purchase decisionmaking
process. According to Xiang and Gretzel
(2010), social media sites are substantially
directed to those who look for travel information
through search engines. During the consumers’
information search, social media has become one
of the major sources of online travel information
(O’C¸ onnor, 2008; Xiang and Gretzel, 2010).
Today, many DMOs have incorporated branding
techniques with social media. DMOs are
using social media to create destination-brand
identity and image by posting their branding
activities on YouTube and creating pages on
Facebook. Social media has made a two-way
conversation possible with the consumer participating
in the development of a destination-brand
identity/image (Hipperson, 2010). In other
words, not only DMOs but also consumers are
able to post what they want on social media websites
and gain attention from others. Currently, a
substantial number of consumer-generated
videos (CGVs) exist on destinations; these CGVs
have the ability to influence consumers’ brand
perception of a destination. Therefore, DMOs are
no longer the major controllers over their brands
and messages and consumers are also creators
and distributors of social media content.
Accordingly, DMOs recognize the importance
of having consumer-generated social media
contents. They have sought ways to market their
destination utilizing the Internet and social media,
the most favored media choices for those bornafter
thelate1970s(Devetal.,2010).Thisgroupofindividuals
has a high buying power; therefore,
research is necessary to discover and refine effective
branding strategies. It is important for destination
marketers to understand whether CGVs
deliver the same destination-brand identity/
image as marketing organizations have traditionally
delivered. If not, how does the destination
identity and brand created by CGVs
impact consumer choice? Currently, there is a
lack of research on consumer perceptions of
videos and contexts created by consumers and
those created by DMOs.
Thus, this study proposes three research
questions:
1. Howdoconsumersperceivedestinationbrands
created by consumer-generated content?
2. How do consumers perceive destination
brands created by DMOs?
3. How are consumer perceptions of a destination
brand created by consumer-generated
content different from a destination brand
created by DMOs?
Literature review
Destination branding
Branding techniques have become ‘‘powerful
tools’’ for tourist destination marketers because
a brand can identify and differentiate the destination
through a positive image that ties tourists to
the destination emotionally (Cai, 2002; Gnoth et
al., 2007). A brand is defined ‘‘as name, term sign,
or combination of them intended to identify the
goods and services of one seller or group of sellers
and to differentiate them from those of the competition’’
(Kotler, 2000: 404); a branding concept
incorporating visitor experience into the process
of branding is supported within a tourist destination
context (Blain et al., 2005). Ritchie and
Ritchie (1998) define a destination brand as
follows:
A name, symbol, logo and word mark or other
graphic that both identifies and differentiates
the destination; furthermore, it conveys the
promise of a memorable travel experience that
is uniquely associated with the destination; it
also serves to consolidate and reinforce the
recollection of pleasurable memories of the destination
experience. (p. 103)
According to Tasci and Kozak (2006), a destination
brand refers to the marketing activities
of DMOs and would influence awareness,
choice, satisfaction, recommendation, and loyalty.
Many DMOs use destination branding as
their main strategy because a strong brand creates
value added to the seller and buyer as it
builds strong equity (Cai, 2002). Many state
DMOs have created logos and slogans for their
destination to differentiate and promote themselves
from others (Lee et al., 2006). A number
of destination-branding success stories were
introduced in Destination branding: creating the
unique destination proposition (Morgan, 2004).
A branding technique, such as brand advertising,
was used by DMOs before the advent of the
Internet, and was referred to as a one-way communication
(Pereboom, 2011). However, due to
the use of social media offered through the Internet,
brand marketers are currently facing a
dilemma (Hipperson, 2010). Today, consumers
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often refer to social media posts by other consumers
when they make a purchase decision; the
brand posting can have a positive or negative
impact on the brand purchase (Hipperson,
2010). Therefore, because of social media, destination
branding has become a two-way communication.
Consumers not only share their
experience on a brand but also create a brand
by posting their own content, which can consist
of videos, a few words, sentences, or essays on
the brand. Social media has made it possible for
marketer-generated content and consumergenerated
content to coexist.
Social media
Although the term social media is difficult to
define, it is considered an Internet-based application
that conveys consumer-generated content
(Blackshaw, 2006). The applications refer to
consumers’ activities related to the Internet
such as ‘‘posting,’’ ‘‘tagging,’’ ‘‘digging,’’ or
‘‘blogging.’’ Consumer-generated content is considered
‘‘a mixture of fact and opinion, impression
and sentiment, founded and unfounded tidbits,
experiences, and even rumor’’ (Blackshaw and
Nazzaro, 2006: 4). It is created, disseminated, and
used by consumers and aimed at educating each
other about products, brands, services, and issues
(Blackshaw and Nazzaro, 2006). According to
Bughin (2007), the chief motivations of consumers
for posting content on social media were found to
consist of a hunger for fame, the urge to have fun,
and a desire to share experiences with friends.
Therefore, social media content is produced by
consumers among themselves, and can challenge
DMOs (Xiang and Gretzel, 2010).
The use of social media on the Internet has
changed the information search and contributed
to the five key marketing functions—promotion,
product distribution, communication, management,
and research (Schmallegger and Carson,
2008). DMOs use social media, especially blogs,
as part of their business strategy for each of the
above-listed functions (Schmallegger and Carson,
2008), while travelers use social media in
their online travel information search stage of the
purchase decision-making process (Xiang and
Gretzel, 2010). Xiang and Gretzel (2010) found
that travelers were directed to social media as a
result of search activity and suggested that social
media plays an important role in traveler information
search behavior. In addition, social media
influences the decision-making process of prospective
tourists (Volo, 2010). Comments and
recommendations for future intentions to travel
to a destination from blogs have an impact on
prospective tourists (Volo, 2010).
Word-of-mouth (WOM) marketing is a viable
alternative to traditional marketing communication
tools and an appealing strategy among practitioners.
WOM affects most consumer purchase
decisions and has literally no cost and a faster
delivery than traditional marketing communication
tools (Brooks, 1957; Dichter, 1966; Trusov
et al., 2009). Social media on the Internet has
empowered marketers to exploit WOM marketing
strategies (Kozinets et al., 2010). The impact
of WOM on social media has been significantly
magnified in the marketplace because one consumer
can easily communicate with hundreds
or thousands of other consumers about products
(Mangold and Faulds, 2009). In addition, companies
can communicate with their customers and
customers can talk to companies via social media
(Mangold and Faulds, 2009). According to Trusov
et al. (2009), WOM referrals of social media
influence new customer acquisition. In short,
social media has been a driving force or a main
vehicle for WOM marketing strategies.
Social media has shifted the paradigm of
brand creation. Traditionally, company information
was available internally and the company
controlled information dissemination. However,
today company information can be exploited by
consumers through social media by either posting
comments, opinions, or sharing information
with peers (Kaplan and Haenlein, 2010). These
actions result in an enormous amount of
consumer-generated content that is easily formed
on the Internet through social media. A brand can
be created or tailored by consumer-generated
content with social media. With consumergenerated
content, companies can provide better
customer service and attain consumer insights on
product innovation. In addition, consumers can
carry over company information or content to
peers, which is a more effective way to advertise
the company’s products and services than
through traditional advertisements (Foux,
2006). Marketers have acknowledged the benefit
of using consumer-generated content because it
aids in customer support and/or brand image
enhancement/branding strategies (Foux, 2006).
Currently, a substantial number of videos and
blogs regarding tourist destinations have been
created and posted on social media websites. It
is easy to search travel videos posted by individuals
or DMOs before making a travel decision.
DMOs attempt to build its brand by creating
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advertisements and posting them on social
media, while a consumer posts and shares his/her
experience on a destination brand. Eventually,
both the contents generated by a destination and
a consumer will comprise the destination brand.
It has become necessary for DMOs to monitor
consumer-generated content and consumer
perceptions on the content. Thus, the following
propositions were proposed:
Proposition 1: Consumers have multiple perceptions
of a destination brand created by
consumers.
Proposition 2: Consumers have multiple perceptions
of a destination brand created by
DMOs.
Proposition 3: Consumer perceptions of a destination
brand created by consumers are
different than a destination brand created
by DMOs.
Methods
Given the importance of social media on marketing
communications and branding strategies, the
first objective of this study was to investigate
how consumers perceive destination brands created
by consumer-generated content and destination
brands created by DMOs. The second
objective explores how consumer perceptions
of a destination brand created by consumergenerated
content differ from a destination brand
created by DMOs. Las Vegas was chosen as a
target destination. In the past, Las Vegas had
an image of ‘‘Sin City’’ with mixed and confusing
messages given to consumers. Since Las
Vegas experienced high visitor fallout following
9/11, extensive research was undertaken and Las
Vegas DMOs rebranded the destination image
from ‘‘Sin City’’ to ‘‘What Happens in Vegas
Stays in Vegas’’ (Hudson and Ritchie, 2009).
The current study used YouTube for data collection
purposes. It is the most popular site for
individuals to share videos and comments.
Videos posted by individuals and videos posted
by DMOs were selected as consumer-generated
content and marketer-generated content. To measure
consumer perception about destination
brands, this study used video comments left on
YouTube. Two separate content analyses were
conducted to analyze the comments associated
with both the CGVs and marketer-generated
videos (MGVs). Content analysis is scientific,
objective, systematic, quantitative, and can attain
a generalizable description of the communication
content (Kassarjian, 1977).
Since YouTube poses unique sampling problems,
it was important to obtain a good representation
of the defined universe (Kassarjian, 1977).
At the time of the study (20 September 2011), a
search of ‘‘Las Vegas’’ resulted in 1014 videos
posted on YouTube. First, the authors gleaned
their pool of CGVs. A systematic random sampling
technique narrowed down the number of
CGVs. Every second video from the list was randomly
selected for a total of 506 videos. Each
video was scanned to identify who posted it.
Those posted by DMOs and videos related to
media or news, not related to travel, were
excluded. A total of 107 CGVs were drawn.
Next, MGVs were identified by searching the
user’s name ‘‘lasvegas,’’ which is the name of
Las Vegas’s DMO on YouTube. In total, 91
videos were posted by the destination organization
at the time of the study. These videos were
referred to as MGVs in this study. Finally, to perform
the data analysis all comments that
belonged to 107 CGVs and 91 MGVs were saved
into two separate text files.
Textual data was content-analyzed using the
computer-based content analysis software
‘‘CATPAC.’’ This is text-mining software that
reduces the text to meaningful dimensions by
analyzing a large number of textual files. As
explained in the manual by Woelfel (1998),
CATPAC is a self-organizing artificial neural
network that has been optimized for reading
text. CATPAC is able to identify the most
important words in a text and determine patterns
of similarity based on the way they are
used in text. (p. 11)
CATPAC includes hierarchical cluster analysis
and multidimensional scaling of words, which
allow researchers to effectively identify dominant
themes that were conveyed in the texts. As
a result, CATPAC has been often used in tourism
research (Douglas and Mills, 2006; Govers and
Go, 2007; Stepchenkova and Morrison, 2008;
Tussyadiah and Fesenmaier, 2009). The program
identifies the most frequently used words and the
co-occurrence of words. Then, it produces visual
relationships among the frequently occurring
words with a dendrogram. Computer-aided
content analysis requires an iterative smoothing
procedure for interpretable and meaningful
results: (a) certain grammatical and stop words
such as is, a, the, and I and Internet slangs and
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abbreviations such as lol, rofl, btw, or gi are
excluded and (b) plurals and past tense are
replaced with singulars and present tense. After
the technical operations, content analysis was
conducted using Ward’s clustering method and
multidimensional scanning and the five-word
window size of CATPAC.
Results
Consumer comments were collected from 107
CGV clips (CGVCs) and 91 MGV clips
(MGVCs) about Las Vegas on the YouTube
website. CGVCs were watched more than
MGVCs: the total number of CGVC views (hits)
was 4,671,467, while the total number of MGVC
views (hits) was 1,847,448. (Total number of
views are the total number of times the videos
were watched or the total number of hits
received.) The average number of views (hits)
for CGVCs was 50,235 and that for MGVCs was
20,302. The average number of views across all
video clips was calculated by dividing the total
number of views (hits) across all video clips by
the number of video clips analyzed. The most
watched video of CGVs was viewed 1,163,362
times and the most watched MGV was viewed
944,379 times. Descriptive statistics of video
clips and comments indicate that CGVs attract
online users more than MGVs (see Table 1). The
key observation regarding the comments is that
viewers are much more active when watching
CGVs than MGVs. The number of comments
by users across all CGVCs analyzed was
17,477, while only 321 comments were made
by users across all the MGVCs. The number of
comments on the CGV clip with the most comments
was 5246, while the MGVC with the most
comments received only 33 comments.
Consumer perception of destination brands
created by consumer-generated content
In an analysis of the comments of 107 videos, the
most frequently occurring word was girl, occurring
621 times (9.8% of total words). The second
most frequently used word was love, occurring
575 times (9.1%). The third most frequently used
word was show, occurring 346 times (5.5%). The
next most frequently used word was funny,
occurring 324 times (5.1%). People was ranked
as the fifth most frequently used word, occurring
321 times (5.1%). Awesome (307 times, 4.9%),
good (306 times, 4.8%), nice (295 times,
4.7%), best (294 times, 4.7%), and great (293
times, 4.6%) were ranked within the top 10 most
frequent words (see Table 2).
Proposition 1: Consumers have multiple perceptions
of a destination brand created by
consumers.
The dendrogram produced by the content
analysis of CGVs identified three categories of
keywords, and thus supports the first proposition
that consumers have multiple perceptions of a
destination brand created by consumers (see Figure
1). The first category was titled ‘‘adult entertainment’’
and includes the clustered keywords
amazing, awesome, good, love, great, show, girl,
people, best, nice, live, funny, hot, hard, and real.
The second category was titled ‘‘overall feeling’’
and includes the keywords cool, fun, and happy.
The last category was titled ‘‘evaluation of
videos and music’’ and includes the keywords
life, music, wait, win, water, song, and shay. The
largest cluster of keywords, ‘‘adult entertainment,’’
seems to represent consumer interest in
stimulating and provocative content. The comments
are often made among negative criticism
Table 1. Descriptive statistics of videos and comments
CGVs MGVs
Number of video clips analyzed 107 91
Total number of views (hits) 4,671,467 1,847,448
Average number of views (hits) across all video clips 50,235 20,302
Number of hits on the most viewed video clip 1,163,362 944,379
Number of comments across all video clips 17,477 321
Number of comments on the video clip with the most comments 5246 33
Number of video clips analyzed ¼ Number of video clips used in this study; Total number of views (hits) ¼ Total number of times
the videos were watched; Average number of views (hits) across all video clips ¼ Total number of hits/Number of videos
analyzed; Number of hits on the most viewed video clip ¼ The highest number of hits on a single video; Number of comments
across all video clips ¼ Total number of comments of videos analyzed; Number of comments on the video clip with the most
comments ¼ The highest number of comments on a single video.
CGV: consumer-generated video; MGV: marketer-generated video.
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and responses to each other’s comments. CGVs
appear to have little positive impact on a destination
brand and the power of negative and provocative
feedback could increase as social media
and user-generated comments proliferate. Examples
of comments in this category are as follows:
Your videos are amazing, Great to visit Las
Vegas
Cute and sexy lol Wow those girl are getting
hotter and hotter: D
I can’t believe this trash. It’s ridiculous not
everyone wants to see sluts dancing around the
old pirate show was ten thousand times better
I remember a time when this show didn’t
include any whorish looking women in it. Now
the once family friendly show on the strip has
turned into a cheap sex ridden nightmare
Consumer perception of destination brands
created by DMOs
In an analysis of the comments of MGVs, the
most frequently occurring word was song, occurring
24 times (13.8% of total words) and the
second most prevalent word was love, occurring
23 times (13.2% of total words). The third most
frequently used word was best, funny, girl, and
people occurring 9 times each (5.2%). Awesome
(7 times, 4%), great (7times, 4%), city (6 times,
3.4%), playing (6 times, 3.4%), and show (6
times, 3.4%) were ranked within the top 10 frequently
used words (see Table 2).
Proposition 2: Consumers have multiple perceptions
of a destination brand created by
DMOs.
The dendrogram produced by the content
analysis keywords in MGVs identified six clusters
and supports the second proposition that
consumers have multiple perceptions of a destination
brand created by DMOs (see Figure 2).
The first category was titled ‘‘night city life’’ and
includes the clustered keywords amazing, lights,
and city. The second category was titled ‘‘gaming’’
and includes the clustered keywords awesome,
playing, and cool. The third category
was titled ‘‘general and adult entertainment’’ and
includes the clustered keywords best, girl, love,
funny, song, people, wait, and hot. The fourth
Table 2. Importance of keywords: frequencies
Consumer-generated videos Marketer-generated videos
Word Frequency Percent Word Frequency Percent
Girl 621 9.8 Song 24 13.8
Love 575 9.1 Love 23 13.2
Show 346 5.5 Best 9 5.2
Funny 324 5.1 Funny 9 5.2
People 321 5.1 Girl 9 5.2
Awesome 307 4.9 People 9 5.2
Good 306 4.8 Awesome 7 4
Nice 295 4.7 Great 7 4
Best 294 4.7 City 6 3.4
Great 293 4.6 Playing 6 3.4
Hot 265 4.2 Show 6 3.4
Live 235 3.7 Good 5 2.9
Song 216 3.4 Hot 5 2.9
Amazing 202 3.2 Lights 5 2.9
Real 184 2.9 Treats 5 2.9
Cool 163 2.6 Amazing 4 2.3
Shay 162 2.6 America 4 2.3
Wait 161 2.5 Club 4 2.3
Fun 157 2.5 Cool 4 2.3
Life 154 2.4 Favorite 4 2.3
Water 152 2.4 Place 4 2.3
Music 151 2.4 Tuna 4 2.3
Happy 148 2.3 Wait 4 2.3
Win 145 2.3 Wrong 4 2.3
Hard 143 2.3 Brilliant 3 1.7
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category was titled ‘‘overall feeling’’ and includes
the clustered keywords good, show, and great. The
fifth category was titled ‘‘food’’ and includes the
clusteredkeywordsAmerica,brilliant,treats,tuna,
and wrong. The sixth and last category was titled
‘‘club’’ and includes the clustered keywords club
and place. Comments generally reflect the viewers’
own experiences and knowledge of the destination.
Examples of comments in this category
are as follows:
There are hot women in Vegas and I see them
all the time but most of the people do go there
to gamble and not hang out at the pool
I was there (on the strip) when it happened it
was amazing because Vegas Never turns off
lights. It was dark that rare for a city like viva
Las Vegas
I just came back from Las Vegas two days ago
and it was an amazing experience I would like
to come back again
Differences in consumer perceptions of a
destination brand created by CGVs and
MGVs
The results indicated that CGVs generate more
views (hits) and comments than MGVs and that
there are also differences between CGVs and
MGVs in terms of the frequencies of word occurrence
and topics discussed. More than half of the
keywords (i.e. amazing, awesome, best, cool,
funny, girl, good, great, hot, love, people, show,
song, wait) were commonly found between
CGVs and MGVs. However, the importance of
the words when measured by frequencies of
occurrences was generally different between
CGVs and MGVs. For instance, girl was often
found in both the comments on CGVs and
MGVs, but the word, girl, occurred most frequently
in CGVs while it was the fifth most frequently
occurring word in MGVs. Some
keywords were different between CGVs and
Figure 1. Pattern of relation between keywords in comments of CGVs: Dendrogram.
CGV: consumer-generated video.
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MGVs: fun, happy, life, live, music, nice, real,
shay, water, and win were words from CGVs and
America, city, club, favorite, lights, place, playing,
treats, tuna, and wrong were found as keywords
in MGVs. Negative or provocative
words tended to occur more frequently than positive
words on CGVs. The word that occurred the
most frequently in the CGV category was girl,
while that in the MGV category was song.
Proposition 3: Consumer perceptions of a destination
brand created by consumers are
different than a destination brand created
by DMOs.
Therefore, the results of the content analysis
presented in the dendrograms and frequency
table support the third proposition that consumer
perceptions of a destination brand created by
consumers are different than a destination brand
created by DMOs. First, the number of dominant
themes from consumer perceptions of CGVs was
much smaller than those from MGVs. Viewers of
MGVs share information about various attractions
and activities in Las Vegas, while viewers
of CGVs tend to pay more attention to sexual and
negative stimulation. This tendency resulted in
the largest cluster of adult entertainment that
includes negative criticism, arguments, and
words of abuse in the CGV category.
Discussion
The purpose of this study was to investigate consumer
perception of destination brands created
by consumer-generated content and DMO content.
In addition, the differences between consumer
perceptions of a destination brand
created by consumer-generated content and consumer
perceptions of a destination brand created
by DMOs were investigated. Using textual data
from an online social networking site, consumer
Figure 2. Pattern of relation between keywords in the comments of MGVs: Dendrogram.
MGV: marketer-generated video.
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comments were content-analyzed. The results
identified three categories of consumerperception
clusters of consumer-generated content:
‘‘adult entertainment,’’ ‘‘overall feeling,’’
and ‘‘evaluation of video and music.’’ Six categories
of consumer-perception clusters of
marketer-generated content were identified:
‘‘night city life,’’ ‘‘gaming,’’ ‘‘general/adult
entertainment,’’ ‘‘overall feeling,’’ ‘‘food,’’ and
‘‘club.’’ The popular words used in comments
were similar across consumer-generated content
and marketer-generated content. However, the
number of times the words were used varied
across consumer-generated and marketergenerated
content. More negative or provocative
words occurred in consumer-generated content.
Even though Las Vegas rebranded its image from
‘‘Sin City’’ to ‘‘What Happens in Vegas Stays in
Vegas’’ (Hudson and Ritchie, 2009), these
results suggest social media seems to disseminate
more ‘‘Sin City’’ image than ‘‘What Happens
in Vegas Stays in Vegas’’ image.
According to Qualman (2009), traditional
advertisements have less trustfulness than opinions
by peers to consumers. Also, individuals
are more likely to look up peer posts than postings
by an online news site. Therefore, reviews
on specific products and services posted in social
media are more popular. Similar results were
shown in that the volume of page views and comments
of consumer-generated content was much
higher than those from marketer-generated content.
It seems that consumer-generated content
attracts more people than marketer-generated
content.
This work has several important implications
for practitioners. A destination brand is being
shaped by not only DMOs but also consumergenerated
content on social media as consumergenerated
content can significantly and quickly
influence a destination brand image. Destination
marketers should not ignore consumer-generated
content on social media. Consumer comments on
consumer-generated content are valuable sources
for marketers because they reflect interactive
activity meaningful to destination brands. The
current study shows consumer-generated content
does not seem to carry the same destination
brand that marketer-generated content creates
because there were differences on consumer perceptions
of consumer-generated content and
marketer-generated content. Marketers should
acknowledge that a two-way communication in
social media allows consumers to participate in
the development of a destination brand identity
and image (Hipperson, 2010). Therefore, marketers
should develop effective ways to influence
consumers. Suggested examples include the following:
(a) utilize consumer-generated content
to deliver messages that marketers want to disseminate
regarding their destination brand, (b) regularly
monitor consumer-generated content and
comments of consumer sentiment, and (c) exploit
consumer comments on consumer-generated content
and marketer-generated content to drive product/service/brand
development/improvement.
Consumer comments on social media are an
indication of content engagement intent and
underlying motivation. Our results indicate
consumer-generated content currently has little
positive impact on a destination brand due to the
negative and provocative feedback from
consumer-generated content. The success of
branding strategies with social media depends
on the quality of a small number of heavy uploaders
having many subscribers or celebrities.
Thus, marketers should identify heavy and popular
uploaders on social media and understand
their motivations. Then, marketers can encourage
them to post quality content on the destination
and create destination brand desired by
marketers through postings on social media.
There are several limitations to this study.
First, the data came from one large social media
site, YouTube, targeting just one destination, Las
Vegas. The results can be considered as case sensitive.
Therefore, more destinations and social
media sites should be investigated in the future.
Second, negative elements such as not, never,
hardly, and so on were not measured and Internet
slangs/abbreviations such as lol, rofl, btw, gi,
repeated words, and misspelled words were
excluded in the analysis.
Funding
This research received no specific grant from any
funding agency in the public, commercial, or
not-for-profit sectors.
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