Understanding the world heritage sites’ brand diffusion and formation via social media: a mixed-method study
International Journal of Contemporary Hospitality Management
ISSN: 0959-6119
Article publication date: 10 July 2023
Issue publication date: 30 January 2024
Abstract
Purpose
Building on social media and destination brand-related literature, this study aims to explore World Heritage Sites’ (WHSs) brand diffusion and formation process from long-term and short-term perspectives, which includes brand diffusion, user-generated content (UGC), opinion leaders and brand events’ impact.
Design/methodology/approach
This study uses a mixed-method including text mining, keyword analysis and social network analysis to explore the brand formation process of four popular WHSs in Beijing, namely, the Palace Museum, Great Wall, Summer Palace and Temple of Heaven and more than 10,000,000 users’ data on Sina Weibo has been implemented to uncover the underlying social media branding mechanism.
Findings
The results show that the number of postings keeps in a stable range in most months, but, in general, there are no common rules for changing trends among the four WHSs; long-term high-frequency keywords related to history and culture account for a higher percentage; different kinds of accounts have varying impacts on information diffusion, in which media accounts lead to a bigger influence. However, more followers do not necessarily mean more interactions and most of the interaction ratio is much lower than 0.01000; brand events facilitate brand dissemination and have an impact on the creation of UGC.
Practical implications
This study is valuable for destination marketers to deeper understand brand diffusion and formation and provides valuable insights for developing effective destination marketing strategies.
Originality/value
Unlike previous studies that only concern a few parts of destination brand formation via social media (e.g. brand diffusion, brand events or opinion leaders’ impact), this study takes a more comprehensive perspective by systematically analyzing the brand formation process of WHSs on social media. By considering both long-term diffusion and short-term representative events, this study provides a more holistic understanding of the branding mechanism.
Keywords
Acknowledgements
The authors thank Dr Marcella De Martino and three anonymous reviewers for their helpful comments.
Credit authorship contribution statement: Zongshui Wang: Conceptualization, Methodology, Writing – original draft, Writing – review and editing and Funding acquisition. Wei Liu: Methodology, Formal analysis, Writing – review and editing. Hong Zhao: Writing-review and editing, Validation, Supervision; Zhuo Sun: Data analysis.
Funding: Social Science Foundation of Beijing (22GLB028), Project of Cultivation for Young Top-motch Talents of Beijing Municipal Institutions (BPHR202203237), National Natural Science Foundation of China (71972175) and China Postdoctoral Science Foundation (2022M723496).
Citation
Wang, Z., Liu, W., Sun, Z. and Zhao, H. (2024), "Understanding the world heritage sites’ brand diffusion and formation via social media: a mixed-method study", International Journal of Contemporary Hospitality Management, Vol. 36 No. 2, pp. 602-631. https://doi.org/10.1108/IJCHM-02-2023-0190
Publisher
:Emerald Publishing Limited
Copyright © 2023, Emerald Publishing Limited