Social Media Marketing Impact on Airbnb

This dissertation explores the impact of social media marketing (SMM) on Airbnb, a company in the share economy. It investigates how SMM affects brand awareness and lead generation, using a quantitative survey approach. The study analyzes customer experiences, preferences, and demographics to understand the effectiveness of Airbnb's social media strategies. The research also identifies challenges and opportunities for Airbnb in leveraging social media for business growth. The findings highlight the importance of social media in enhancing brand visibility and customer engagement, while also pointing out areas for improvement in customer service and online presence. The dissertation concludes with recommendations for Airbnb to optimize its social media marketing efforts.

Dissertation

Table of Contents
The Possible advantage of Social Media Marketing (SMM).................................................5
Possible challenge with Social Media Marketing..................................................................6

Abstract –
This research explored the impact of social media on share economy market through
example by Airbnb company. SM is a form of internet tools and applications that allow
people to generate and distribute content or to join through Social Networking (SN)
(Albarran, 2013) Currently, Social media exists nearly every aspect of our individual and
business lives. In business, for any company’s overall strategy, it is not just about marketing
and public relationship but social media also carry a vital role of business success. Today,
within the business realm, there are most significant social media tools such as Facebook,
Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn, YouTube, TripAdvisor and others. These tools are allowing
consumers to interact with each other through online in regards of product information,
service, direct feedback and overall business success. Through this kind of practice, helps
businesses to analysis consumer’s problems, demands and wish list by gathering consumer
information and later reflect on product to fulfil consumers demands (Kim, et al., 2015).
Furthermore, social media helps to build business reputation or brand and brand community
(Appendix 1, a). To exploring the brand community, based on social media which reflects
positive effect on business and build communities’ value creation practices, brand trust, brand
awareness and brand loyalty (Habibi, et al., 2012). Furthermore, to maximize the usefulness
of SM, firms not only answer to customer feedback but also proactively use SM to enlarge
their customer base and inspire further purchases using SMM (Gamboa , & Gonçalves,
2014). Through using SM platforms, firms can very quickly share marketing substances with
large number of consumer group. It is very much cost efficiency and time saving ( Dobelea,
et al., 2005). Currently, Airbnb disrupting old hotel industry’s marketing strategy and the key
success of Airbnb is the use of social media to connect with customer (Holmes, 2013).
However, nowadays each hospitality firms use social media platforms to get competitive
advantage. So, in that case, it important to analysis what SM impact on Airbnb business. This
study investigates the impact of social media on the success of Airbnb overall, as measured
by the impact of social media outreach on lead generation and brand awareness.
Introduction
The social media have crated huge impacts of organization and their activities. This is
revolutionary changes which take place in the past few years. Effective use of social media
could give maximise amount of business, minimising marketing expenditures and generate
company competitive advantage. Social media is an unavoidable as a main marketing tool to
enhance brand awareness and get quick success in any business. With the help of social
media entities can increases their business and along with that gain more international
customers. SMM to enhance brand awareness of any product or service. Using this
transformation, many modern companies have succeeded very quickly rather than using the

traditional marketing approach. The social media helps to entities to again competitive
advantage and along with this they can also make their customers more awareness.
Among with this customer get also benefits from the using of social media. It helps to them to
get awareness regarding to the entities services and products and also make aware. in this
regards customers easily find solution of their problems. There are various types of social
media channels such as Facebook, twitter, Instagram and many other plat from which helps to
company to expand their business. The present report is based on the Airbub which I US
based company. The company is based on unique idea in which they offer services by renting
their houses to people which come to visits to their country. In this people offers their house
as rent to other people and earn money. With the help of social media they can offer services
to worldwide. Airbnb mostly using social media marketing (SMM) tools which is become a
major important aspect of Airbnb marketing instrument and customer relation management.
With the help of social media they gain more international customers in their business and
maximize their profits and ensure long term growth.
Literature review
Background of this study –
The Short-Term Room Renting’ (STRR) or vacation rental group is the second largest group
of lodgings after hotels industry. Its predictable global market size of nearly $100 billion
(Serviced Apartment Summit, 2016). Basically, the first idea of lodging STRR business
evolve in US market by VRBO (Vacation Rental by Owner) which currently a part of
HomeAway Family (Hagiu & Rothman, 2016) (VRBO, 2017). Later this practice spread
around the world due to its innovations of the product and high market value. STRR are most
larger among United State of America (USA)and European Union (EU), consecutively
produces more than $85 billion in income in which averaged nearly $14,000 per estate
(Serviced Apartment Summit, 2016). There are number big companies which are highly
established following this nature of the business, are all headquarter from USA. Currently,
the top STRR player such as AirBnB, HomeAway Family, TripAdvisor, FlipKey and others.
However, Airbnb is an individual largest company of STRR, including market share near
about 30$ billion (Serviced Apartment Summit, 2016) (Zervas & Proserpio, 2016) which is
more than the Hilton worldwide which market capacity is 23.33$ billion (Ting, 2016). Within
USA, Airbnb has nearly 550,000 listing while California is the chief of all states by 125,803
total properties listed, and New York in second place by 94,976 Airbnb listed (Airdna, 2016).
Although there is a high potential of the market, many home sharing companies face off due

to the number of prohibitions and geographically-based controls on short-term rentals
Industry in many different states in US also around the world (Jefferson-Jones, 2015, p. 12)
Figure 1 Airbnb listing within USA (Airdna, 2016)
Furthermore, STRR investment or distribution are mostly gone through online by represented
94% of the overall transactions value over the 5-year period (Serviced Apartment Summit,
2016, p. 9). Through enabling people to list or renting short-term lodging including vacation
rentals, apartment rentals, homestays, hostel beds, or hotel rooms, Airbnb company is an
online marketplace and provide hospitality service (Airbnb, 2017). The company is merely a
broker and received percentage from both host and guest in regard with every booking in
online. Airbnb does not own any lodging. The company is not like other hotels but let people
to sharing each other houses. Furthermore, due to low cost transaction through online, Airbnb
mostly using social media marketing (SMM) tools which is become a major important aspect
of Airbnb marketing instrument and customer relation management. Furthermore, Airbnb
website itself a social media platform.
Effective use of social media could give maximise amount of business, minimising marketing
expenditures and generate Airbnb’s competitive advantage. The literature currently does not
give much more information on peer to peer marketing reference to Airbnb operation in
United State (US) but in general research of hotel industry, it is strongly recommended that
social media is an unavoidable as a main marketing tool to enhance brand awareness and get
quick success in any hospitality business (Inversini & Masiero, 2014). Furthermore, in a

bigger picture, United Nations World Tourism Organization (UNWTO) (2012), suggested
that both tourism and hospitality sector should stress online communication with customer,
facilitated by social media to gain competitive advantage. Due to the digital transformation
and increase of competition, it is currently very complex to implement or easy to get
competitive advantage by using SMM to enhance brand awareness of any product or service.
Furthermore, within this research, it has also studied on how SMM impact on brand
awareness
Airbnb and online marketing in the share economy
It is necessary to know what it would take for a brand to boost any online marketplace. There
are many traditional rules for an overall marketing approach, which has overturned due to the
influence of digital transformation. Using this transformation, many modern companies have
succeeded very quickly rather than using the traditional marketing approach. Amongst those
companies, they are mainly technology based such as Airbnb, Uber and others (Leigh et al.,
2017, p. 64). In this research, we select the company; Airbnb, who are running a successful
business by renting out rooms, flats or houses for short-term use within a two-sided platform
or sharing economy including guest and Host.
Sharing economy is a revolutionary market, collectively known as peer-to-peer markets or
peer economy, which individuals can rent or borrow properties owned by someone else
(Investopedia, 2017). Here Airbnb and Uber is one of the most successful marketplace
entrepreneurs within the peer to peer online market. Furthermore, Social media marketing
(SMM) is an essential part of online marketing. However, without analysis its advantage and
disadvantage, Social Media Marketing (SMM) is very difficult to build or carry on an online
marketplace as there are many hidden traps are building on it. According to Hagiu &
Rothman (2016) who explored several hidden traps within the online marketplace, they
identified four key aspects including growth, trust & safety, disintermediation and regulation
which is mentioned more elaborately in Appendix 3.
Furthermore, peer economy market largely depends upon social media to gain content
marketing. For example, a company like Airbnb or Uber who are leading businesses within

the sharing economy. These companies also have social media platforms which they work
through over company’s websites, applications, and others social media platforms that allows
clients to generate and distribute content or to join in social networking (Google, 2017).
Furthermore, Airbnb and Uber have got specific product and selected consumer segments.
Although Airbnb itself is a social media channel, there are some giant SM channels, such as
Facebook and Twitter who have more users than Airbnb. Therefore, it is essential for Airbnb
to focus upon online marketing on the social media to enhance their 'content marketing' or
increasing brand awareness.
The Possible advantage of Social Media Marketing (SMM)
According to Mercadal (2014) express that the public and private organizations use social
media marketing as a comparatively new addition to the IMC (Integrated marketing
communications) systems to link with their target market or consumer. It is promotional tool
and controls several components including, brand awareness, direct marketing, sales
promotions publicity, advertising, and more (Mercadal, 2014). The basic role of SMM is to
create media content which attracts and influence users to share it and create public
awareness (Mercadal, 2014). Furthermore Brown & Hayes (2007), pointed out that social
media also carry a significant role on influence marketing through the impact of blogs, wikis
and others social media platform. By replacing traditional sources of influence, firms using
SM platform to enable new influencers to emerge. Furthermore, they argued that to bring
down the competitive advantage, organisation needs to generate market awareness, creates
more leads and address sales barriers which are closely related to the persistent growth and
advantage of word of mouth (WOM). In addition, currently, it is very commons use of SMM
approach in both strategy building and firm’s operation role, such as social customer
relationship management, social media monitoring for marketing intelligence, viral
marketing, advertising on social media and more on (Charlesworth, 2015)
The use of social media as tool of marketing strategy, there are many businesspersons face
problem because of lack of knowledge in how to use SM in SMM strategy (DeMers, 2014).
By the same time many small and large firms globally spending billions of pounds in each
year and most the of the money has been spent on wrong people (Brown & Hayes., 2007).

Possible challenge with Social Media Marketing
According to Sethna et. al, (2013, p. 254) they expressed that there are some cases where a
small number of followers on Facebook or fans on Twitter are actually genuine, but, the
maximum amount of followers are from their rivals or other local businesses. They also
expressed a fine connection between the image of the business and the individual personality,
and that some businesses could be mistakenly affected through their name by posting wrong
individual information. For example, in 2014, Coca-Cola faced extreme criticisms from both
Russia and the Ukraine by creating controversial New Year's greeting on a Russian social
media site which contained a map of Russia where it happened to omit Crimea, the region of
Ukraine. After confronting the issues raised from several Russian SM users, Coca-Cola
announced an amended version of its map which comprised the whole of the region. But,
after altering the map of Russia to contain Crimea, this only provoked additional anger from
Ukrainian handlers who delivered a series of abuses across social media sites and asked for
the prohibition of Coca-Cola. (Makortoff, 2016). There are some issues which can be seen in
marketing communication on and offline with social media. According to (Smith & Zook,
2011, p. 467), recently many businesses who used to rely upon SMM and suffered due to’
less web visible’, or lack of adding fresh information of the company’s product which
apparently creates no-traffic followers and without mass followers makes SM sites become
incompetent. In contrast, he also added that on some occasions constant observation is a high
requirement due to the security hackers’ scams; fake followers; and spammers risking and
crashing. In addition, an uninvited email is reflected even more offensive and, as a result,
spam or junk mail which is against the law in recent consumer markets in respect of direct
marketing via internet (Smith & Zook, 2011, p. 398).
Furthermore, in regards of SMM within the two-sided market, many marketers faces
problems to analysis it. There are a number of researchers who have examined the difference
between several divisions of the hotel industry but it would be a wrong practice if they treat
Airbnb in the same way. According to Liua & Mattila (2016) they have been justified through
research such as Airbnb, to individualise itself from the usual hotels by offering guests a
‘feeling at home’ experience (e.g., belongingness) and an ‘atypical place to stay’ expeerience
(e.g., uniqueness) (Airbnb, 2017, b). Therefore, two of these issues can be addressed within
this research.

There are few academic findings (brief intro of those findings) have examined on Airbnb and
social media connection (Zervas & Proserpio, 2016) (Stephanie Q. Liua, 2017) and given
these issues, it is important to research the coverage to which SMM and customer relation
strategies benefit for Airbnb organisation. The aim of this research was to adopt those
difficulties exploiting by quantitative study with a survey proposal. In addition, there are a
lack of quantitative data connected to the impact of SM on Airbnb formation in US which
hypothetically makes it challenge for the company to defend investment in SM approaches.
Secondly, there are substantial gaps in research literature regarding the social media impact
on Airbnb formation.
To measuring the outcome by defining the goals, a constructive planned approach of SM
method in marketing must be taken. According to Kelly (2012), express that social media
assists to accomplish three collective marketing goals including ‘Lead Generation’,
‘Customer Retention’ and ‘Brand Awareness’. Furthermore, this section will review how
above collective planned marketing goals benefited by use of social media tools.
Brand awareness
According to Aaker (1991 cited Šerić, et al., 2016, p. 162), to create a brand equity, brand
awareness is the first step which outlined as the prospective ability consumer to identify and
memorise the designation of the brand. Furthermore, on his research he segmented three level
of branding awareness. First is top of the mind – such as when in generally we think about
soft drinks, it usually comes up in the mind the name of Coka Cola Product. Second is
Unaided brand recall - such as realisation of a brand when it arises to brain as soon as its
product type is stated. For example, if we talk about London Underground it pop up the name
of TFL company and the final is Brand reorganization. Furthermore, there are significant
benefits to access high level of brand awareness. Aaker (1991 cited Šerić, et al., 2016, p. 162)
further mention three type of benefits during intruduing high-level of brand awareness
including brand learinging advantage, high visible brand and finally it influene and deliver
the choice of advantage in low-involment parchases decision, in case of lack of buying
ablility or purchases motivation. Mitchell & Boustani (1992), added that when a product is
totally new for the certain consumers, is toally new about any certain product, they base their

interest on observations of items believed to be trendy, well-known, and having a well
reputation within the market.
Furthermore, Brand awareness also increase through the identification of brand image. A well
know brand image helps to recognise quickly by consumer. Brand image creates both
affective and cognitive qualities that consumers connect to particular brands (Dobni &
Zinkhan, 1990). Romaniuk and Sharp (2003) express that brand image creates from a range
of sources, comprising with WoM (Word of Mouth) recommendation, consumer knowledge
and marketing communications. According to this view it also reflects that brand image also
influence customer purchasing decision and also recommend the product to others.
Furthermore, it is also proved that there are many firms have been effected after promoting
wrong advertisement or brand logo (Heilpern, 2016). In the case of Airbnb logo which also
face criticism such as many commentators suggested that is looks like some sexual organ or
others part of human body (Kelion, 2014).
Furthermore, brand awareness is a practice to placing product information and awareness on
consumer’s mind and about getting more cautiousness on that specific brand (Kelly, 2012).
For example, there are several practices can be seen where brand awareness has increased in
business to business (B2B) and business to customer (B2C) using social media. For example,
through analyses a case study of King Arthur floor (Vermont, 2014), where the firms brand
awareness and dependability developed with the use of social media. Company generally
communicate with consumer by sharing the pictures of foods, recipes, cooking techniques,
bickering process at Facebook, Twitter and company’s blog. According to King Arthur’s
Facebook (Facebook, 2016) page its show 904,559 people like this and 878,208 people
follow the information of company’s product and in twitter 28.9 K followers. Furthermore, in
another point of view this above example can be contrast with lead generation process which
helps to firm to build a good relationship with customer and later reflect this relation reflect
on greater sales.
Generate More Leads –

According to the business need, companies generally increase their business to get further
lead or competitive advantage. According to Kolowich (2017), lead generation is the
prospects into those leads firms just talked about and process of attracting and converting
stranger to followers. In another view, currently lead generation process in global business
has changed due to the change of selling and buying process, while marketers needs to find a
new strategy to reach to the customer (Marketo, 2017). They also added that marketers must
now focus on being found and learn to build continuous relationships with customers, instead
of finding buyers with email blasts and mass advertising. For example, Airbnb has faced a
great challenge in China by ranks third behind home-grown competitors Tujia and Xiaozhu in
number of lodging listings but recently Airbnb boost its Chinese market by its new push aim
strategy to increase its domestic presence by changing Airbnb name by Aibiying (Financial
Times, 2017). Which apparently it helps to Chinese travellers to easily pronounce it.
Furthermore, McTigue (2015) added that to generative a better level of lead, it is vital take
qualified sales leads through high quality content marketing and targeted customer, not just
depend of demographic segment rather focusing on buyer's behaviour. To updating high
quality content marketing, ICT(Information Communication Technology) plays a vital role to
help quality level communication among firms and customers and for that case social media
is the most effective platform to reach in front of the number customers very quickly, with
less cost.
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According to (Kelly, 2012), Social Media can efficiently generate further leads for any
business. He defines a ‘lead’ as someone who expresses interest in any company’s product
and has provided contact information to the company. He also explains the strategy of
generating leads in any business is not the way of keep promoting about product in social
media rather establishing customer engagement and listening from the customer. In addition,
traditional lead generation strategies include with create an integrated marketing plan,
recognize your target clients’ needs, optimize local search listings, solicit reviews and
establish an emotion connection (Villar, 2014) for example, the Hubspot which is an effective
lead-generation and business to business software company (Kelly, 2012). They sharing tips,
resources, in depth information of marketing contents, target customer information through
twitter, Facebook or Google+ (Kelly, 2012, p. 28).
Business project Aim and Objectives

The determination of this business project is to study on how Airbnb using social media
mode to making effective marketing strategy. This practice based on the data of consumer’s
attitude and their experiences on Airbnb and to recognise those areas for further development.
Aims:
The aim of this project is to evaluate the effect (relationship) that SM tools (such as
Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, YouTube and blog) impact on brand awareness and customer
influence with the unit of analysis being Airbnb US.
The objectives are:
1. To evaluate the use of SM as part of the Airbnb’s marketing strategy
2. Determine how social media platform impact on AirBnB’s brand awareness
3. To examine how the SM platform help in generating leads for AirBnB
Research Methodology
In this chapter, it has explained the primary data analysis approaches and the methods of the data
collection. This following piece of work will clarify the administration of data collection; the
instrument of primary data collection, the sampling size and its method connected with the research. It
is also justifying the chosen methodology for this research on the use social media marketing by
Airbnb to enhance brand awareness and generate further lead. The survey is conducted in online
through a web base survey and target audience who are potential interested on STRR within US. The
entire sample has drawn with the support of SurveyMonkey Audience data base. Furthermore, ethical
consideration and consent form are being display in SurveyMonkey website (SurveyMonkey, 2017, a)
Traditional survey is based on paper &pencil, telephone, mail survey or in face to face among
administered and Self-administered survey. But currently due to evolving information communication
technology (ICT) which altered all those traditional survey modes to electronically and computers
enable recorded data survey which known as web base survey (Callegaro, et al., 2015, p. 5). The
primary strength and the restriction of web survey method are very beneficial to collect information