The Influence Of Instagram User Generated Contents (UGC) On Tourism Sites Branding
The rise of social media in recent years has not only provided a powerful marketing force for companies, but also given consumers the opportunity to create interactive online contents that are associated with brands. These user generated contents (UGC), such as picture posts of products or comments on specific campaigns, could help provide consumers who are overwhelmed by all kinds advertisements with useful opinions of experienced customers and at the same time function as a part of the co-creation of brand values and experiences. Different from how firms used to unilaterally send out marketing messages to customers, nowadays consumers could actively exchange their thoughts on different brands or even help companies promote positive images through UGC on social media platforms.
When taking a closer look at the relationship between UGC and brand marketing, it is obvious that firms and marketers are losing their control over brand management due to the fact that UGC could reach a wide range of consumers in an unbelievable high speed. According to Arnhold (2010), however, this situation wouldn’t be viewed as a definite drawback for companies. On the contrary, when the messages individuals are spreading out match the personality and the values that the brand has been sticking to, it would help establish consumer trust. Even when UGC contains brand-related contents that don’t coordinate with the brand’s core concept, it still has a chance to let audiences understand the brand from a totally different aspect, thereby giving the company an opportunity to target new groups of customers. As an example, users of Apple Macintosh have begun sharing product information and filming online tutorial videos in their self-built brand communities since the early 2000’s, and these brand communities together built up the Apple image of “innovative” and “against the mainstream, ” which helped attract new customers who could relate to these personality traits.
Besides technology corporations such as Apple, industries of other genres have been greatly influenced by the emerge of online UGC, and tourism is one of them that is often been discussed recently. The images of tourism spots are largely shaped by comments on travelling websites and detailed reviews on social media regarding the hotels, cuisines, tourist sites, and the overall environment of the destination. Furthermore, Doolin, Burgess, and Cooper (2002) has indicated the importance of photos and pictures for tourism marketing by conducting a tourism Web experiment and showed how necessary it is to add images of travelling spots on these websites. Photos enable travelers to authentically capture how tourism spots look like, thereby arousing the imagination of people who see the pictures and trigger them to actually visit these places. Therefore, out of all the social media platforms used to create and share UGCs, Instagram, which especially focuses on the sharing of online photography, is often viewed as one of the media that has the greatest impact on tourism industries and destinations. While a lot of studies have concentrated on how tourism industries can make good use of social media to advertise tourism spots, seldom research specifically focused on Instagram. In addition, these studies mainly looked at how travel agencies, governments, and tourism companies design social media marketing strategies to promote travelling spots, but did not pay great attention to how UGC actively created by tourists could affect the image of tourism sites. Therefore, this article aims to find out the impact UGC on Instagram related to travelling may have on the brand of tourism destinations.
Motivations to Create, Share, and View UGC
In order to understand the effects on tourism brought by UGC on Instagram, it is crucial to first find out what motivates Instagram users to post photos of travelling sites and to view or like these picture post generated by others. According to the research done by Muntinga, Moorman, and Smit (2011), the main factors that trigger Internet users to post UGC include personal identity, social interaction, entertainment, and empowerment, which respectively indicates the desire to present self-identity via these contents, to meet and interact with people that are similar to themselves, to seek for self-entertainment, and to gain the power that could influence the audiences. As for the specific action on posting travelling photos, Fatanti and Suyadnya (2015) pointed out that the motivation lies especially on personal identity, interaction, and empowerment. For personal identity, sharing tourism pictures could help promote that the user is a “traveler” and a “photographer, ” and the ways they take photos and the kind of filters they add onto pictures could all become a kind of implication of their own personality traits. For interaction and empowerment, the new functions on Instagram such as “Direct Message” and “Stories” enable the viewers of travelling photos to easily respond to these posts. When users who shared the pictures see the messages, not only they could have an opportunity to meet people who have similar hobbies but also get to obtain the sense of fulfillment when they find out that their posts could actually drive audiences to travel to places that they’ve already been to. On the other hand, factors that would motivate people to simply consume UGC or interact with UGC creators include information, entertainment, personal identity, and social interaction.
Manap and Adzharudin (2013) have pointed out that people who search for recommendation of travel spots or decide their tourism destination via UGC posts mostly do so from the perspective of gaining authentic information, which relates to the information dimension mentioned by Muntinga, Moorman, and Smit (2011). It is said that these viewers who look up UGC on social media mostly assume that the users who share these pictures or experiences are expressing their true feelings to help more people instead of doing advertisement and earning money from travel agencies or government departments, which indicates that they believe the information they see are all true and trustworthy. Apparently, this is why picture posts of tourism spots on Instagram could attract a great amount of people to view, like, share, and even comment: the audience view photos as a media that could show the “reality” of a specific place, and thus tend to gain information or search for their next travelling destination via these Instagram picture posts.
Influence on Toursim Spot Brands Brought by UGC
After looking at the motivations for users to create tourism related contents on Instagram and view these posts, it is obvious how audience rely on UGC to make decisions and how influential UGC is especially to the image and the branding of tourism destinations. According to Fatanti and Suyadnya (2015), however, the image formation of different travelling spots doesn’t wholly rely on realistic photos and visualized UGC. The brand identity of these places could only be completely built when the pictures contain messages that imply the value of the sites and the travelling experience. As an example, the Instagram travel account @californiathroughmylens, founded by Josh McNair and his wife, shares beautiful photos taken in California, USA. Even though when most people think of the state of California, sunshine, beaches and Hollywood would probably be the scenes that first come to mind, Mcnair focuses more on the natural landscapes in California and especially posts a lot of photos taken in national parks. These photos aim to present the beauty of California from a totally different point of view and could thus help create a new image and personality of this state, thereby attracting other types of tourists who have never thought of visiting California in the past.
As another example, the couple Brie and Reuben together operate the travel account @vancitywild on Instagram. They aim to show the beauty of their hometown, Vancouver, and post beautiful photos they have taken as they travel around the stunning city. Different from a lot of Instagram photographers who simply share pictures and only put hashtags or the basic information in the caption, the couple would briefly write down the situation they were in when taking the photo and describe their feelings towards the scene. With the additional description, these posts become more than just the visualization of Vancouver and function as a kind of media that promotes the “experience” of travelling around the city. By understanding the tourism experience in words and looking at the travelling pictures at the same time, viewers could not only obtain information needed or imagine the situation when visiting the tourism spots, but may also be able relate to the thoughts of the photographers and hence notice the core value of these places. Therefore, it is natural for these audiences to be fond of the value and ultimately become eager to join the experience. As concluded by Prahalad & Ramaswamy (2004), UGC is strongly connected to the value chain of a company, a brand, or even just a location, and the experience people share online is one of the most crucial elements for the process of value creation.
Conclusion
Overall, through literature reviews and Instagram travel accounts, it is not difficult to find out the influences brought by Instagram UGC on the brand or image of tourism spots. The motivations for Instagram users to create, contributing, and simply viewing picture posts of travelling sites include expressing self-identity, obtaining information online interaction, empowerment, and entertainment, which clearly associate with the factors that drive branding- related social media use listed out by Muntinga, Moorman, and Smit (2011), which thereby indicates the powerfulness of these travelling-related picture posts. Moreover, instead of simply enabling viewers to appreciate the beauty of tourism destinations, these UGC on Instagram have also provided genuine information of these places through the photos, helped rebuild the image of travelling sites, and implied the value of travelling by sharing user experiences. Thus, viewers are able to view specific places from different perspectives, find out a brand new image of sites they have already known or been to, and eventually be eager to become a part of these travelling experiences, and these consequences indicate how Instagram UGCs have a positive impact on the branding of tourism destination.
