MALL, MEDIA, AND ITS IMPACT ON CONSUMPTION BEHAVIOUR

Social media enjoy a phenomenal success in terms of adoption and usage levels. They cause paradigm shifts on how people connect and communicate with each other, on how they express and share ideas, and even on how they engage with products, brands, and organizations. Moreover, social media became significant networks of consumer knowledge. In travel and tourism, the impacts of social media have already been described as tremendous, primarily due to the experiential nature of tourism products, and especially of holiday trips: purchases are considered risky and therefore decision making processes are information intensive.

This study makes four contributions to knowledge. First, to consumer behaviour theory by proposing information exchange as an enlarged consumer behaviour construct consisting of nine components. Second, to the theory of technology fluidity. Fluidity, from being a characteristic of a specific technology, is now proposed as a characteristic of the sets of behaviour and cognitive functions associated with the use of the specific technology or medium. Third, to social media related research in the context of holiday travel by identifying six functional spaces that enclose active users’ specific behaviour and cognitive functions: inspiration, collaboration, decision making, self-expression, communication, and entertainment. Fourth, by proposing the social media enabled travel process model as a framework for understanding use and impact of social media throughout the holiday travel process. A number of implications for practice, as well as emerging areas for future research are drawn.