Social Media Marketing Strategies of Thomas Cook: A Research Project

Desklib provides past papers and solved assignments. This project analyzes Thomas Cook's social media marketing.

RESEARCH PROJECT
An investigation of how Thomas cook promotes through social media

Table of Contents
TASK 1- WRITTEN RESEARCH PROPOSAL.......................................................................................2
RESEARCH TITLE.........................................................................................................................2
INTRODUCTION..........................................................................................................................2
RESEARCH PROBLEM................................................................................................................. 4
RESEARCH QUESTIONS.............................................................................................................. 4
HYPOTHESIS............................................................................................................................... 4
AIM............................................................................................................................................ 4
OBJECTIVES................................................................................................................................ 4
1.2 RATIONALE FOR THE RESEARCH.......................................................................................... 6
1.3 LITERATURE REVIEW............................................................................................................7
SECONDARY SOURCES............................................................................................................... 7
PRIMARY SOURCES.................................................................................................................... 9
1.4 RESEARCH METHODOLOGY FOR DATA COLLECTION AND ANALYSIS.................................10
RESEARCH DESIGN................................................................................................................... 10
ETHICAL CONSIDERATION........................................................................................................11
SCOPE AND LIMITATIONS OF THE RESEARCH..........................................................................12
1.5 ACTION PLAN..................................................................................................................... 13
GANTT CHART.......................................................................................................................... 13
STRATEGY................................................................................................................................ 13
REFERENCES.................................................................................................................................14
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TASK 1- WRITTEN RESEARCH PROPOSAL
RESEARCH TITLE
“An investigation of how Thomas Cook promotes through social media”
INTRODUCTION
Travel and tourism have become of the most important pillar in the economy of the country.
The advancement in technology has made a tremendous change in the activities and operations
of the organizations in the travel and tourism industry that resulted in enhanced tourism
experiences. The role of social media has increased and become important in the travel and
tourism industry (Neuhofer et al., 2014). Social media comprises various platforms such as
Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Pinterest and so on which are used by both the consumers in
order to plan their trips or tours and also by the travel agents in order to communicate and
engage with the customers and sell the tour packages.
Various travel brands use social media platforms to leverage their audiences and connect with
travellers by bringing in business. People nowadays have become so used to these social media
applications that they search on these applications in order to get any information for making a
decision-related to holiday trips. The usage of social media applications resulted in a more
improved and effective relationship between the travel brand and travellers (Molz, 2013). E-
Word of mouth acts as an effective form of marketing. The consumer shares their views and
personal experiences related to a particular hotel, airline or restaurant that helps in other
people in selecting better travel and hospitality services to get a memorable experience.
There are various risks associated with the use of social media. Negative reviews and feedbacks
results in negative publicity and also privacy, trust and security issues may affect the promotion
and sales of tourism products. Social media is effectively used by travel organizations such as
Thomas Cook in order to increase its brand awareness, effectively communicate and engage
with the audiences, and also enhances customer care services for better experiences.
Thomas Cook is one of the oldest and most popular brand names in the travel industry that was
initiated in 1841. With the history of innovation, the company is focused on transforming their
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businesses to serve more customers and deliver their holiday dreams. The revenue sales of
Thomas Cook is £7.8 billion and serves to around 19 million customers every year through
support from around 22,000 colleagues while operating in 16 countries (Thomas cook, 2019).
This research aims to identify the way of using social media for promotion of travel products
and services to large audiences.
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RESEARCH PROBLEM
The interrelationship, usage and influences between the two specific terms that are social
media platforms and marketing activities of Thomas cook are discussed in this research. There
are various researches that examine the utilisation of social media by travellers to search the
information related to the holiday trips and look for personal experiences and reviews and
feedbacks to make an informed decision about their travel (Bizirgianni and Dionysopoulou,
2013). Therefore the research discusses the prime problem that is to investigate the ways of
utilising social media platforms in marketing and promotional activities of Thomas cook.
RESEARCH QUESTIONS
 What is the role and significance of using social media by Thomas Cook?
 What is the level of relationship between social media and marketing activities of
Thomas Cook?
 What is the extent of utilisation of social media platforms in marketing activities of
Thomas Cook?
 What is the extent of the positive or negative impact of social media platforms on the
marketing activities of Thomas Cook?
HYPOTHESIS
1. Social media has positive influences on the marketing activities of Thomas Cook
2. Social media has positively increased customer base.
3. Social media allows clear communication between Thomas cook and customers.
AIM
The aim of the research is to identify the ways in which social media platforms are used to
promote the travel products and services of Thomas Cook.
OBJECTIVES
The objectives of the research are:
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1. To review the secondary sources for understanding the role of social media platforms in
the travel plus tourism industry
2. To identify the level of usage of social media platforms by Thomas Cook
3. To ascertain the social media tools used by Thomas Cook for promotional activities
4. To recommend Thomas Cook regarding the use of social media platforms to enhance its
performance and promotion
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1.2 RATIONALE FOR THE RESEARCH
Social media is increasingly used by various organizations in order to mark their presences in
both national and international business market. Prospective travellers use social media to
collect the information about different travel packages and also check reviews of other people
including family members, friends and so on to research and plan their travel activities (Huang,
2012). Also, different technologies are being integrated by tourism organization such as Thomas
Cook to enhance their marketing activities in order to create awareness in the market and gain
competitive advantages. Therefore this research will seek to explore the ways of using social
media for promotions by Thomas Cook. It will also recommend Thomas Cook to make
improvement in the usage of social media to enhance marketing activities for product and
service promotions around the world.
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1.3 LITERATURE REVIEW
SECONDARY SOURCES
Social media has become one of the most integral parts of the travel plus tourism industry. The
integration of digital technology allowed the business organization and also the consumers and
travellers to connect with each other for the most memorable travelling experience. social
media platforms are one of the best modes for travel organizations and tour operators to
interact with the travellers and build an effective relationship with them and offer attractive
travel products and services to them (Hays et al., 2013). Social media platforms allow travel
organizations to build an effective customer base and also increase their awareness in global
travel and tourism.
Whereas social media sites are increasingly utilised by the travellers and tourism in order to
look for the information related to a particular destination and makes informed decisions
regarding their travel and also share personal experiences of a specific airline, hotel or
restaurant by post-travel review (Hudson and Thal, 2013). The tourism system is significantly
impacted by this mega-trend as social media usage allows decision making of travellers and in
operations and management of tourism.
A literature reviews report was prepared by Leung et al (2013), which included reviews and
analysis of all research articles regarding social media in fields of travel and tourism that were
published in educational journals between 2007 and 2011. It was found that studies were
focused on consumers considering the usage and influence of social media in the research stage
of the planning process of travel by travellers while some studies related to suppliers was
concentrated on management, promotion, research functions and some on product
distribution. It revealed the strategic significance of social media for competitiveness in tourism
and provided an agenda for future research.
Also, the role of social media has grown and become significant in various aspects of tourism
such as decision-making behaviours, information search and also as a best practice to interact
with consumers. It is an excellent strategy to leverage social media to market the products of
tourism. Research publications that focused on social media in tourism were reviewed and
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analysed in this study. It also focuses on gathering knowledge about social media in holiday
business and its future agenda (Zeng and Gerritsen, 2014). This study encouraged a
comprehensive investigation of the impact of social media on different tourism industry aspects
and also demonstrated social media’s economic contribution to the industry.
Another study was conducted by Chan and Guillet (2011) to explore the extent of marketing
using social media in the Hong Kong hotel industry. A total of 18 criteria were adapted from
past studies to evaluate 67 hotels’ marketing performance on 23 social media sites in Hong
Kong. The resulted reflected the poor performance of hotel in learning about customers while
using social media and also identified the major problems in the marketing efforts in social
media by the hotels.
According to Park and Oh (2012), marketing through social media is crucial for the hotel and
tourism industry. A case study of Korean Airline Tour was used to examine the usage of
microblogs, social networking sites and social commerce sites. The study indicated a substantial
amount of profit is made by the company through their investment in marketing activities of
social media. A variety of social media was used by Korean Airline Tour for effective activities of
social marketing. The effectiveness of the marketing activities of the company is enhanced due
to the understanding of the features of each social medium.
Thus the abovementioned literature review, it is clear that social media is increasingly used by
the travel organizations in order to recognize the needs of the customers as well as also
understand the features and characteristics of each social media platform. This helped them in
effectively utilising their marketing efforts on these social media and a general substantial
amount of revenue for the company. This has increased the level of competition among the
travel organizations that aims to cater to a large numbers of customers around the world.
These pieces of literature reviews support the research and further helps in investigating the
usage of social media by Thomas cook in its promotional activities.
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PRIMARY SOURCES
The primary source to collect the data for the research is questionnaire survey. One of the
major benefits of using questionnaire survey is reaching out to a large number of audiences to
collect data within limited time and cost. A standard and systematic questionnaire will help in
collecting quantifiable responses from the respondents and is relatively easy to analyse those
responses (Öz, 2015). However, the questionnaire survey cannot be used to collect information
every time. One of the major disadvantages of using questionnaire survey is varying responses
of respondents to each question since there is a high possibility that the questions might be
misinterpreted or misunderstood by the respondent making it difficult to correct and also
collect missing data.
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1.4 RESEARCH METHODOLOGY FOR DATA COLLECTION AND ANALYSIS
RESEARCH DESIGN
Qualitative and quantitative research approaches are combined used in the research to get a
reliable result. The insights and opinions of the respondents regarding the use of social media
for promotional activities by Thomas cook will be included in the qualitative research approach
(Kumar, 2019). This approached will focus on the human characteristics and traits such as
behaviours, preferences and perceptions and other subjective factors which cannot be
measured through any predefined formula (Kumar, 2019).
On the other hand, to count the insights and opinions of respondents into numerical form, a
quantitative research approach will be used (Dolnicar and Ring, 2014). It is the most common
research approaches used to present exact and accurate result. The basis for selecting both the
research approaches is to count and present the insights and opinions of the respondents
regarding social media and its usage by Thomas cook in promotional activities in numerical
form.
Required data and information will be collected in correspondence to research topic through
the data collection and analysis activity of the research (Banyai and Glover, 2012). Primary and
secondary data collection will be combined and used to gather the data and come to the final
result and conclusion of the research. Secondary data and information will be collected by using
secondary data collection through different sources such as magazines, blogs, journals, books,
articles and other online publications (Dolnicar and Ring, 2014). This secondary data will be
included in the literature review section of the research.
Additionally, the original and new data and information will be collected using primary research
from the participants' response in the survey (Banyai and Glover, 2012). The primary research
will help in gathering information by considering the current market scenario. A systematic and
close-ended questionnaire will be framed and distributed to get the responses from the
research respondents via email. The primary data sources are original data gathered using a
questionnaire survey (Kumar, 2019).
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Stratified sampling method will be used to collect the insights and opinions of employees of
Thomas Cook. The employees of Thomas Cook will be segmented on the basis of their business
functions and will be drawn for each segment. The number of employees selected for the
questionnaire research will be 100 among all the employee of Thomas cook.
Extracting important and useful information is essential to support the research and draw a
strong conclusion. Data analysis process transforms the data collected and converts the same
to represent useful information to meet the research aim and objectives (Banyai and Glover,
2012). The collected data will be analysed and presented in the form of tables and charts using
Ms-Excel so as to be easily comprehended to a large number of audiences.
There will be a limitation in the validity and reliability of the research due to the involvement of
human elements. The companies are increasingly using social media platforms and also
constant emergence of digital technology may result in less valid research for future use. There
may be a difference in perception level about utilising social media among the employees along
with the difference in business functions at Thomas cook. Google scholar is a reliable database
system used to collect secondary sources. The limitations of secondary resources might carry
forward in the present research project.
ETHICAL CONSIDERATION
Voluntary participation will be encouraged among the employees of Thomas Cook. Also, they
will not be compelled to participate in the research instead they will be at their free will
regarding their participation. The dignity of the respondents will be maintained by not asking
any personal information (Miller et al., 2012). Completed attention is considered while
protecting the anonymity and confidentiality of the respondents. All the queries and questions
of the respondents will be cleared by informing the details of the research. The purpose of the
research will be academic and not commercial. Secondary sources included in the research will
be properly in-text cited and referenced in the literature review section ensuring no hindrance
of privacy concern (Miller et al., 2012). The computer and other digital devices that comprise
the data and information from the questionnaire survey will be password protected.
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