The influence of microblogging on
the experience of an event
A case study on the use of Twitter in a
Dutch student introduction week
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Master thesis
Business Administration: Strategy & Innovation
The influence of microblogging on the
experience of an event
A case study on the use of Twitter in a Dutch student introduction week
Faculty of Economic and Business MSc in Business Administration
Department of Innovation Management and Strategy
Date : 23-11-2010
Version : Final version
Load : 25 ECTS
Author : John van Belkum
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Abstract
The objective of this explorative research is to contribute to a better knowledge about the usage and effects of Twitter. Therefore, this thesis explores the use of Twitter in relation to an event and the effect of Twitter on the customer experience of an event. The use of Twitter is divided in three different elements and the customer experience of an event in three different antecedents. This study is focused on the largest introduction week for first year students in the Netherlands. This introduction week is called the KEI-week and takes place in Groningen. 1.192 attendees of this event filled in an online questionnaire. In order to draw conclusions, three statistical methods are applied. Based on this research, it can be concluded that not much people make use of Twitter in relation to an event. Further, the most important conclusion of this research is that especially the enjoyment of an event is influenced by the use of Twitter, where above all the sentiment in the use of Twitter plays an important role.
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Preface
On the first of December 2009, I started my job in the daily board of the organization of the largest introduction week of the Netherlands, the KEI-week. Marketing and external communication were my main functions in the daily board of the KEI-week. I got interested in the power of Twitter and thought that this would be of added value for the external communication before and during the KEI-week. Therefore, I introduced the Twitter in the organization of the KEI-week. During this process, the organization of the KEI-week and the University of Groningen gave me the possibility to research the effects of Twitter on the KEI-week.
After nearly a year I finished my research. This year was partially filled in by organizing the KEI-week and partially by this research. I am very satisfied with the result and I am also very happy with the process of this research.
For this pleasant and convenient process I would like to thank my first supervisor Delano Maccow of the University of Groningen. He gave me the opportunity to delay the research when that was needful and speed up the research when necessary. I would like to thank him for his very quick, useful and inspiring feedback. Besides that, the communication and discussion with him was always very respectful and positive. Further, I would like to thank my second supervisor, Hendrik Snijders, for reading and evaluating this research.
I want to wish you a happy reading and I hope you will enjoy reading this research as much as I enjoyed organizing the KEI-week and researching these topics.
John van Belkum
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Management summary
The aim of this research is to explore the usage of Twitter in relation to an event and to explore the effects of the use of Twitter on the customer experience of an event. This study is thus focused on an event, where the KEI-week is used as case-study for this research. To serve this objective, two questions are central in this research. These two central questions are “To which degree do people attending an event make use of Twitter?” and “What is the effect of the customer use of Twitter on the customer experience of an event?”.
The theoretical relevance of this research is based on the increased importance of the two central phenomena in this research: the experience economy and social media. Events are a very important part of the experience economy, have a significant economical impact, have a positive influence on social and cultural aspects and are therefore interesting to investigate. Further, it is interesting to investigate the form of social media that is growing most rapidly: microblogging and herein the biggest player Twitter.
Based on the existing literature, the concepts of microblogging and the customer experience of an event are further defined. The way of using microblogging or Twitter is divided in three different ways: the frequency of use, the way of using and the sentiment in de use of Twitter. The customer experience of an event is also separated in three antecedents: involvement, enjoyment, and social interaction.
The number of respondents that filled in the online questionnaire is 1.192 answers. Unfortunately, only 80 of these respondents made use of Twitter.
Via three statistical methods, the Spearman Correlation Rank Coefficient, the multiple regression method and the canonical analyses, these data is analyzed. Based on this data there can be concluded that a disappointing amount of 6,7% made use of Twitter in relation to the KEI-week.
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Table of contents
1 Introduction ... 7
2 Research framework... 11
2.1 Social media... 11
2.2 Microblogging and Twitter ... 13
2.3 Customer experience ... 17 2.4 Conceptual model ... 25 3 Research Design... 31 3.1 Research strategy ... 31 3.2 Data Collection ... 32 3.3 Data analysis... 33 3.4 Respondents... 34
4 Results and Discussion... 35
4.1 Graphical presentation of the use of Twitter in general ... 35
4.2 Spearman Correlation Rank Coefficient ... 36
4.3 Multiple regression analyses... 40
4.4 Canonical analyses... 42
4.5 Graphical comparison between populations ... 44
4.6 Summary of the different results ... 45
4.7 Findings compared to the existing literature ... 46
5 Conclusions and Recommendations... 48
5.1 Answering the sub questions and the central questions ... 48
5.2 Answering central question one... 49
5.3 Answering central question two ... 49
5.4 Limitations of this research and recommendations for further research ... 51
5.5 Recommendations for the company ... 53
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1
Introduction
Since the introduction of the phenomenon ‘experience economy’ by Pine & Gilmore (1998), the topic experience has received more and more attention in the literature. Obviously, there is a clear reason behind this. Industries where experience play the dominant role, are growing rapidly over the last years. Even in other sectors, like banking and retail, creating an experience is becoming important (Poulsson and Kale, 2004). Herein, the cultural and festival events play a significant role. Events have proven their value in being one of the fastest growing forms of leisure (Getz, 1997). It also proved to have a great social, cultural, and economic value (Robertson, Chambers, Frew, 2007). Further, events provide a huge business value in terms of economic contribution (Paiola, 2008). In other words, the event sector is a booming sector.
Another growing phenomenon from the last years is web 2.0 or social media. There has been a shift in the demands of users of the internet. Nowadays, the most common reason for using the internet is for seeking social interaction (Iriberry & Leroy, 2009). This shift led to the enormous growth of social media websites like YouTube, Facebook, and Twitter. There are many different types of social media, where social networks, blogs, wikis, microblogging, and forums are examples (Mayfield, 2009). At the moment, microblogging is the fastest growing form of social media, especially in businesses (Schwartzman, Smith, Stream, Spetner, 2009). The biggest player in the microblogging industry is Twitter (Church, 2008).
Theoretical relevance
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Finally, the literature states that Twitter is a heavily used tool under especially younger people (Java, Finin, Song, Tseng, 2007). Nevertheless, there is little scientific information available about the usage of young people in terms of events. This study tries to investigate to which degree young people make use of Twitter in relation to an event.
Practical relevance
This study is focused on an annual event in the north of Netherlands, called the KEI-week. The KEI-week is the introduction week for first year students in Groningen. This event is a five day event and hold its 42th edition in 2010, from Monday the 16th till Friday the 20st of August. During these five days 18 different events varying from sports, culture, information and party events were held. Every year, about 4.300 new students join the KEI-week as participant. Since January 2010, the KEI-week has made use of microblogging towards its participants. After one year, the organization of the KEI-week wants to investigate if and how the participants involved in the KEI-week have used and perceived microblogging. Additionally, they want to know if the use of microblogging influences the experience of the event.
Objective, central question and sub questions
In this report, which functions as a master thesis for the University of Groningen, the objective is to contribute to a better knowledge about the usage and effects of Twitter. This contribution can be divided into two elements. First, this study wants to add knowledge to the scientific field of the effects of web 2.0 and social media on the creative industries. Second, this research aims to provide information to the organization of the KEI-week about the degree of usefulness of Twitter in reaching a higher level of customer experience. In order to serve this objective, it is interesting to investigate if people make use of Twitter in relation to an event in the first place. Further, researching the effects of the customer use of Twitter on the customer experience of an event is required. Therefore, this research consists of two central questions:
1. To which degree do people attending an event make use of Twitter?
2. What is the effect of the customer use of Twitter on the customer experience of an event?
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Formulating propositions in order to answer the second central question is more difficult. Because little is known about the specific relationships between the use of Twitter and the customer experience of an event, it is very hard to come up with realistic propositions that are based on the existing literature. Therefore, this study focuses on presenting the bigger picture of the relationships between these two phenomena and therefore has an explorative character. Accordingly, no propositions will be formulated but sub questions will be used in order to answer the second central question. Before these sub questions can be defined, more detailed information around customer experience of an event and the use of Twitter is required. From the existing literature one may conclude that the customer experience of an event can be roughly divided into three dimensions: involvement, enjoyment, and social interaction. Investigating the relationship between the use of Twitter and these three dimensions will form the basis for the main three sub questions. Further, according to the literature the use of Twitter can be divided into three different ways: the frequency of use, the way of using and the sentiment in de use of Twitter. The relationships between the different ways of Twitter and the three dimensions of customer experience will also be taken into account. Hence, to each main sub question three other questions will be added. In total, there are twelve sub questions formulated. These sub questions can be seen in three groups of four questions. In every group of four questions one dimension of the customer experience plays a central role, which is either involvement, enjoyment or social interaction. The first question of every group investigates the relationship of the total use of Twitter on that particular dimension of customer experience. The following three questions are focused on the relationships in more detail. The twelve sub questions that are formulated are the following:
1. What is the effect of the use of Twitter on the involvement during an event?
a. What is the effect of the frequency of using Twitter on the involvement during an event? b. What is the effect of the way of using Twitter on the involvement during an event? c. What is the effect of the sentiment in using Twitter on the involvement during an event? 2. What is the effect of the use of Twitter on the enjoyment during an event?
a. What is the effect of the frequency of using Twitter on the enjoyment during an event? b. What is the effect of the way of using Twitter on the customer during an event? c. What is the effect of the sentiment in using Twitter on the enjoyment during an event? 3. What is the effect of the use of Twitter on the involvement during an event?
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The research question will be answered via a survey under a population of 4.378 participants of the KEI-week. This survey will be conducted via an online questionnaire. In this questionnaire, the use of Twitter and the experience of the event will be measured. A total amount of 1.192 visitors of the KEI-week filled in the online questionnaire, this means a respond rate of 27,2%. The data collected about the customer experience of the event are based on a Likert-type scale ranging from 1 to 5. In order to keep the questionnaire in the same structure, the measurement of Twitter use is also done on the same Likert-type scaling.
Different statistical methods are used in order to analyze the data and answer the sub questions and central questions. No statistical methods are required to answer the first central question. This question will be answered through observation of the collected results. Answering the second central question is more difficult. To do so, first the twelve sub questions will be answered. These sub questions can be divided into two groups. The first group are the main sub questions 1, 2, and 3. These questions investigate the relationship of the group of variables of Twitter on one of the variables of the customer experience of an event. Therefore, the multiple regression analyses is the most appropriate method. The second group of questions are the more detailed sub questions a, b, and c. These questions investigate the relationships between each of the variables of Twitter and customer experience. For these relationships the Spearman Correlation Rank Coefficient will be used. This method enables the calculation of the correlation between two sets of ordinal data. Based on these sub questions, central question two will be answered. In addition, a canonical regression analyses will be used to calculate the effect of the set of variables of Twitter on the set of variables of the customer experience of an event. The canonical regression method will thus support in answering central question two.
Structure of this paper
This paper is structured as follows: after this chapter the research framework will be presented. The research framework consists of a literature overview and a conceptual model. In chapter three the research design will be discussed. The results will be presented and analyzed in chapter four. This will form a basis in answering the sub questions and central questions and draw conclusions and recommendations. This will be done in chapter five, where also the limitations of this research will be discussed.
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2
Research framework
In the introduction, the research question is formulated. In order to answer this research question, an overview of the existing literature is required. Therefore this chapter will provide a comprehensive overview about the literature around the central topics according to the following research questions:
1. To which degree do people attending an event make use of Twitter?
2. What is the effect of the customer use of Twitter on the customer experience of an event?
After the literature overview is presented in the first section, the second session shows the conceptual model in this research. This conceptual model presents the relationships that will be investigated. Additionally, the studied relationships in this research are described based on the existing literature.
2.1
Social media
Internet is a mainstream medium. People use Internet primarily as source of information. However, people nowadays use the Internet more and more to contribute information. For example in forms like blogs, microblogs, videos and wikis. Hence, social interaction is one of the main reasons to be active on the internet. People stay in touch with their friends, play games with each other, and even meet new people (Iriberry & Leroy, 2009).
Social media is therefore a popular topic at the moment. Cooke & Buckley (2007) stated that Web 2.0, user generated content and online social networks are the main trends regarding the Internet. Especially younger people prefer the use of social networks above for example the use of e-mail (Goldsborough, 2009). Nevertheless, the popularity of social media under high educated people from 25 to 34 years old is increasing rapidly (Kim, 2008). Similarly, the number of social network sites increases enormously (Ullrich, Tan, Boreau, Shen, Luo, and Shen, 2008).
2.1.1
Definitions
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communities and content. In this research the approach of Kangas will be used because this definition is very comprehensive and therefore cited many times. In the following paragraph the three basic elements of social media will be explained shortly.
Web 2.0 is defined as a technological and business revolution which has shifted internet from a one-way communication technology towards as a community platform where user participation and interactivity plays a dominant role (O’Reilly, 2005; Kangas, 2007).
Online communities enable the forming of social groups on the Internet (Iriberry & Leroy, 2009). Lee et al. (2003) defined online communities as platforms where communication and interaction lead to member-driven content which is facilitated by information technology.
Member-driven content or user-generated content (UGC) are all the comments, positively or negatively, placed on websites (Cheong and Morrison, 2008). This can be anything for posting a microblog on Twitter, commenting on a movie on YouTube to writing a complete blog.
2.1.2
The emergence and importance of social media
There are a couple of reasons why social media emerged so rapidly. First, the user generated content in online blogs, videos and pictures is overwhelming the traditional communication channels like newspapers, broadcasters and writers. Second, the desire of people to look for their own information and decide by themselves which information to consume increases the success of social media. Lastly, social media facilitates the opportunity to share experiences and increase social interaction (Cooke & Buckley, 2007).
The emergence of social media has implications for individuals and for organizations. The difference of how people interact with each other and how people connect is herein the most important factor for implications (Mabry and Porter, 2010).
For individuals the most important benefits are linked with forming a social group like building friendships, having fun, emotional support and social interaction. Further, the possibility to gather and produce information anytime and anywhere makes social media very time and location flexible (Iriberry & Leroy, 2009).
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Porter, 2010). Social media is thus also very popular in marketing terms. Social media marketing, also known as word-of-mouth marketing, viral marketing, buzz, or guerilla marketing, is focused on affecting the communication between customers (Kozinets et al, 2010). Further, social media can have an influence on the reputation of a company (Fischer, 2009). Social media can also add value in the feedback process on companies' products or services (Krell, 2009). Last, social media can have an influence on companies' employees because it can increase communication, trust and productivity (Iriberry & Leroy, 2009).
2.1.3
Types of social media
There are multiple different forms of social media. Mayfield (2009) states that there are basically seven forms of social media. These seven forms are social networks, blogs, wikis, podcasts, content communities, forums, and microblogging, which will be explained shortly.
Social networks are websites that facilitate individuals to interact socially. In that way, social network sites provide the opportunity to communicate with friends and share content like pictures and videos. Worldwide, Facebook and MySpace are the largest social media websites, in Holland this is Hyves (Saint, 2010). Probably the most wellknown form of social media is blogging. The word blog comes from the two words "web log". This actually means the log of the most recent updates from a particular topic, they are thus online journals. Wikipedia is the most popular form of a wiki website. A wiki website is a website that can be modified by everybody (McLean, Richards, Wardman, 2007). Podcasts are files, mostly audio, video, or images, which are downloadable through services like Apples’ iTunes. One of the most popular types of social media are content communities (Saint, 2010). These websites share specific kinds of content like photos (Flickr) and videos (YouTube). Forums are platforms which facilitate discussion around a particular topic or area. A forum is the oldest form of social media and therefore still a powerful part of the Internet (Mayfield, 2009). Last, microblogging is the newest form of social media (Sangani, 2009). Microblogging is actually two forms combined with each other, namely social networking and blogging. With microblogging it is possible to write instant small blogs of content where other users can read these messages. It is a new form of blogging where the user’s input is lower but the frequency of posting is higher (Java, Finin, Song and Tseng, 2007).
2.2
Microblogging and Twitter
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According to Cutler (2010) on venturebeat.com, Twitter is still growing enormously. In June 2010 Twitter reached 125 million registered users. In April 2010 the total amount of users was 105 million. The awareness of Twitter is growing as big as the awareness from Facebook (Saint, 2010). Based on the total population of people older than 12 year in the U.S., the percentage that has ever heard of Twitter grew from 5% in 2008 to 87% in 2010 which is the same as Facebook (88% in 2010).
The service of Twitter is found in March 2006 during a project in the company Ordeo (Sangolla, 2009). Jack Dorsey, who came up with the idea, wanted to be able to update his colleagues and friends about the progression of the project. Further, he was interested in what his colleagues and friends were doing. Within one year his idea grew to Twitter incorporate, which was launched in March 2007. At the moment, people use Twitter in all countries all over the world, from conversations between friends to distributing news from all over the world (Cheng and Evans, 2009). The question that Twitter asks is “what are you doing” which transformed after a while in “what’s happening” (Sangani, 2009). In order to answer this question, people can write messages consisting of a maximum of 140 characters. These messages posted on Twitter are called ‘Tweets’.
Every Twitter user can follow users and can be followed by users. These people are not necessarily friends or acquaintances. In a research of Huberman, Romero and Wu (2008) is concluded that there are two kind of groups in an online social network. The first one are actual friend and the second group is a more concentrated group of ‘followers’.
Microblogging is closely connected to social networking because of its possibility to connect to other persons. Twitter is a very open system. You can decide who you want to follow and others can decide if they want to follow you. It is possible to block people if you don't want to be followed by them and at any moment you are able to ‘unfollow’ somebody. Twitter provides the opportunity to filter all the messages on a particular topic. If you are interested in the latest updates around a certain topic, you are able to search for this. Furthermore, it is possible to send people direct messages (DM). This means that only the receiver can read the message (Sangani, 2009).
In a research of Java, Finin, Song and Tseng (2007), four user intentions are formulated. The reasons why people use Twitter are the following: daily chatter, conversations, sharing information, and reporting news. With reporting large disasters and important political issues as first in the world, Twitter already proved the latter user intention (Church, 2008). Grosseck and Holostescu (2008) state that Twitter is a tool used for six different goals: educational goals, promoting blogs, marketing goals, political goals, spreading news, and social networking.
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brand name is mentioned and in 20% of these brand Tweets a sentiment or a feeling is expressed (Jansen and Zhang, 2009). Therefore, they conclude that Twitter is a powerful online tool in stimulating worth-of-mouth. Twitter is, like more social media types, a tool that enables people and companies to talk with each other. Therefore, it contains the same benefits and implications as mentioned in the previous chapter.
Due to these reasons microblogging has grown bigger than blogging over the last years in organizations. After social networking, microblogging is the 2nd activity of companies regarding social media (Schwartzman, Smith, Stream, Spetner, 2009). Especially small and medium sized companies adopt Twitter very quickly (64% of the companies). Jansen and Zhang (2009) advise organizations to integrate microblogging in their overall branding strategy. They propose that Twitter is becoming very important and influential in the future economy. A good and recent example occurred in the Netherlands with the company T-mobile. A famous comedian with about 40.000 followers posted negative Tweets about the service of T-mobile which led to an approximate damage of €100.000,- in one week (MarketingTribune.nl, 2010).
2.2.1
The Twitter population
Due to the fact that Twitter is growing so rapidly, the facts about users and the specifics about the users are changing quickly as well. Therefore, many different statistics are available at the moment. Nevertheless, the overall message of these statistics is similar to the statistics of other forms of social media, namely that younger people are the most active in microblogging. Sixty-five percent of the users of Twitter are under 25 years old (Cheng and Evans, 2009).
According to Nakano (2009), 20% of the total adults ages 25 to 34 have used Twitter as have 19% of the people from 18 to 24. This percentage is much higher than the percentage of the total population. Only 7% of the total population have used Twitter (Saint, 2010). Accordingly, it can be concluded that younger people use Twitter more than the rest of the population.
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years with. The smallest group of users are people from 45 to 54 (12%) and people older than 55 years (7%).
Other interesting statistics about the population of Twitter states that there are slightly more women making use of Twitter compared to men, 53% versus 47% (Cheng and Evans, 2009; Saint, 2010). Further, black people have a relative high percentage in the Twitter population compared to the population in general. 25% of the Twitter population consists of black people where this is only 12% in the general population (Saint, 2010).
2.2.2
Definition of the use of Twitter in this paper
To measure the intensity of use of Twitter by customers it is important to look at a couple of factors. Murdough (2009) stated that when the level of use of Twitter is measured, three measurement pillars are required: reach, discussion, and outcomes.
First, it is important to look at the reach of a Twitter user (Murdough, 2009). Reach tells something about the quantity of mentions. Therefore, it is important to look at the frequency of using Twitter (Fischer, 2009). The frequency of using Twitter tells something about the intensity of use. In the study of Huberman, Romero and Wu (2008) is concluded that the number of posts increase when the number of followers increase. Hence, they state that the frequency of using Twitter, thus the frequency of posting, is a measurement for the engagement within Twitter.
The second pillar of Murdough (2009) contains of ‘discussion’, in other words the content of the Tweets. The content of the posts on Twitter is connected to the sentiment that is used in the posts. It is not only important if people write about you, how many times they write about you, but it is also important to investigate what they write about you.
The third pillar of Murdough (2009) focuses on the outcomes of the activity on Twitter. Examples of these outcomes are purchases or leads. According to this research, these outcomes are the customer experience of the event. This part will be investigated separately and thus not included in the measurement of the use of Twitter.
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produce Tweets and users who do both. Hence, the way of using Twitter is an element which will be taken into account in this study.
In relation to the case study of the KEI event, this paper will investigate the use of Twitter based on three factors:
1. Frequency of using Twitter 2. Way of using Twitter
3. Sentiment in the use of Twitter
The existing relationships between these variables in the use of Twitter will be discussed after the conceptual model in chapter 2.4.
2.3
Customer experience
Creating a sustaining competitive advantage is one of the most important themes in strategic management literature (McGee, Thomas and Wilson, 2010). In the recent literature many authors state that a stronger focus on the experience of a customer is crucial (Gentile, Spiller and Noci, 2007). Since Pine and Gilmore (1998) came up with the term “The experience Economy", a new stage in the progression of value was born. After commodities, goods and services, a new stage in what they call the progression of economic value has emerged. About ten years later, the experience factor plays a more and more important role in the success of companies (Gentile, Spiller and Noci, 2007). Consequently, a new stream of scientific and empirical literature around the concept of experience and more specifically about customer experience appeared. In the following paragraph the subjects experience and customer experience will be reviewed based on the existing literature. After, these definitions will be placed in the context of the industry central in this research: the event industry. Based on the existing literature and the context of this research, a new conceptualization of the definition customer experience will be drawn which will be used throughout this paper.
2.3.1
Experiences
Experiences are different from services. Pine and Gilmore (1998) describe the difference between commodities, goods, services and experiences within one sentence: "While commodities are fungible, goods tangible, and services intangible, experiences are memorable".
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Nevertheless, it is not possible to state that a service is equal to an experience. The difference lies in the objectives of these two subjects. A service is focused on doing something for a customer where an experience is focused on doing something to a customer. Another difference between goods, services and experience is related to the consumption phase. All three have a consumption phase but just in case of an experience this consumption phase is equal to the product that is offered (Poulssen and Kale, 2004).
From previous research is known that there are different stages wherein a consumer experience takes place. These different stages can be distinguished into three categories: when consumers look for products, when they get them and when they consume them (Brakus, Smitt, Zarantonello, 2009). In this research, the focus will be on the latter form of experience: the consumer experience. The reason why this study focuses particularly on the consumer experience is due to nature of the product that will be investigated: an experience good namely an event. Recall that a characteristic of an experience good is that the product only exists on the moment of consuming (Poulssen and Kale, 2004). Later in this chapter, more will be explained about the event industry.
Pine and Gilmore (1998) state that this "fourth economic offering" has received little attention despite its great possibilities. Nowadays, experiences play a more and more important role in the economy. Examples of experience industries are entertainment, museums, tourism, art, sports, theme parks, and events (Sundbo, 2009). These industries, especially the entertainment and event industries, have grown rapidly over the last years. But not only in the explicit experience sectors creating an experience is important, also in the retail and food sector the “experience” factor is playing a more important role. Here, creating an emotional reaction and interaction with the customers is the main objective (Poulsson and Kale, 2004).
2.3.2
Customer experience
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states that sense, feel, think, relate and act are casual factors in building an experience. Pullman and Gross (2004) approached consumption experience from a more social point of view with three elements: anticipation, progression and emotional involvement. The definition of Pine and Gilmore (1998) comes very close to this one. They describe experience in a couple of elements. They state that involvement, social interaction, entertainment, education, aesthetics and escapism are determining the degree of the experience. At last, Gentile, Spiller and Noci (2007) draw a very comprehensive conceptualization of customer experience consisting of six dimensions. These six dimensions are sensorial, emotional, cognitive, pragmatic, lifestyle, and relational.
2.3.3
The event industry
This research focuses on a particular part of the experience economy, namely the event industry. Events are a very important part of the experience economy (Pine and Gilmore, 1998). Cultural events have a significant economical impact (Paiola, 2008) and make them interesting to investigate. Further, events have a positive influence on social and cultural aspects (Robertson, Chambers, Frew, 2007). Besides, the growth of the event sector forces the industry to professionalize their management which raises the desire for practical and theoretical support (Gursoy, Kim & Usyal, 2004).
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2.3.4
Definition of customer experience in this paper
In this study an own definition on customer experience will be formulated based on the existing literature described above. In this conceptualization the focus will lie on the elements that are the most comprehensive and shine a light on every side of the customer experience. Further, the event industry is taken into account in the formulation of the concept customer experience. In figure 1 and figure 2 an overview of the definitions is presented. Based on these two figures the customer experience during an event will be defined.
When the above mentioned literature about the attributes of creating an experience is summarized, it can be concluded that there are some elements that are frequently mentioned. First, involvement plays a dominant role in the literature of defining an experience. Pine and Gilmore (1998) and Snelgrove, Taks, Chalip and Green (2008) talk about ‘involvement’ specifically where Pullman and Gross (2004) have another name for involvement, namely anticipation. In figure 1 and 2, the elements belonging to the term involvement are marked with the letter ‘a’.
Another central topic in the existing literature is enjoyment. Nearly every author includes an element which is related to the topic of enjoyment, either in a way of sense, entertainment, fun or sensation. In figure 1 and 2, the terms relating to the topic enjoyment are flagged with the letter ‘b’.
Last, many authors include an element related to social interaction in their definition of customer experience. Pine and Gilmore (1998) call this social interaction, where Pullman and Gross (2004) and Gentile, Spiller and Noci (2007) talk about emotional involvement. External interaction, identification, and connection to family or a community are other terms related to this subject. The elements that belong to the definition of social interaction are marked with the letter ‘c’ in figure 1 and 2.
21 Figure 2 / Event specific definitions about customer experience
Novelty/uniqueness/entertainment Involvement (a)
External interaction/socialization (c) Identification (c)
Entertainment/excitement (b) Fun (b) Escape Snelgrove, Taks, Chalip and Green, 2008 Education Nicholson and Pearce (2001) Family (c) Taste Enjoy (b) Learn Cela, Knowles-Lankford, Lankford (2007) Connect community/family (c) Figure 1 / General definitions about customer experience
Fantasies (b) Involvement (a)
Feelings Social interaction (c)
Fun (b) Entertainment (b) Holbrook and Hirschman (1982) Sense (b) Pine and Gilmore (1998) Education Aesthetics Sense (b) Escapism Feel (b) Schmitt (1999) Think Sensorial (b) Relate (c) Emotional (c) Act (c) Cognitive Pragmatic
Anticipation (a) Lifestyle
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2.3.5
Involvement
The concept of involvement is broadly examined in the existing literature. There are many different forms and definitions of involvement. The definition by ‘WordNet Search’ is comprehensive. In this definition involvement is described in a couple of different elements. First, involvement includes engagement, participation, and sharing in activities or with others. Further, involvement is related to commitment, connection or containment with a certain situation. Last, interest is related to the concept of involvement. In the following paragraphs different types of involvement, which are not necessarily related to the event industry, will be investigated in order to support the definition above.
During last years job involvement has received a lot of attention. Due to the importance of healthy employees, there has been done a lot of research around this topic (Keller, 1997). A fundament of job involvement is found in the article of Kanungo (1979), where the concept of job involvement is explained. Job involvement is slightly different than the definition about involvement, described in the paragraph above, but has the same basic elements. According to Dubin (1956) job interest has to do with the central life interest of a person. When somebody is extremely interested in his job, the involvement is automatically higher. Furthermore, satisfying needs and the improvement of the self-esteem is a positive factor in job involvement (Vroom, 1962). Last, job involvement increases when employees are highly motivated (Kanungo, 1979). In a more recent research of Brown (1996), these basic definitions of job involvement are nearly identical. In this research is formulated that personal variables (self-esteem, interest), job characteristics (feedback, variety), and supervisory variables (participation, communication) play the most important role in encouraging job involvement.
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defined as the motivation towards participating or involving physically in a particular activity, product or context.
In this study the examination will be made to which degree people are involved to the event. Therefore, the elements discovered in the existing literature about involvement are taken into account in analyzing the level of involvement. Here, the themes participation, connection and commitment, and personal interest and needs play a central role. These elements will be tested via statements based on a Likert-type scale ranging from 1 to 5.
2.3.6
Enjoyment
As mentioned in the existing literature, there are a few attributes of an experience which has to deal with the “enjoyment” factor. Pine and Gilmore (1998) formulate two elements which are closely related to the concept of enjoyment. These two elements are aesthetics and entertainment. In a recent article of Silvia (2010) the author summarized the concept of aesthetics in a comprehensive way. He states that aesthetics is related to experience and emotions in several ways. Emotions and experiences which are connected in the existing literature with aesthetics are beauty, awe, fun and delight.
In their study of four different events Nicholson and Pearce (2001) investigated that five factors are important in creating an experience. One of these five elements is the ‘specific element of an event’. In their article they state that these specifics of events can contribute to the enjoyment of an event. The atmosphere and the theme of an event are the most important specifics of such an event (Nicholson and Pearce, 2001).
In order to investigate to which degree attendees enjoyed the KEI-week event, the concept of enjoyment is studied. Based on the existing literature of enjoyment, certain elements are found that influence the enjoyment during an event. Accordingly these elements will be used in this research in order to help determining the degree of enjoyment, which will be done via statements based on a Likert-type scale ranging from 1 to 5. These elements are the atmosphere of an event, aesthetics and the theme of the event.
2.3.7
Social interaction
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following paragraph a short summary will be given of the literature around the topic of social interaction and relationships, mostly found in the psychology literature.
How individuals react on the behavior of each other forms the foundation of a relationship. Here, mutual adaption plays an important role in the level of social interaction (Capella, 1996). Mutual adaption basically means the way how partners in an interaction respond on each other. When a relationship goes over time, the interaction pattern will be interrelated to each other which improve the social interaction (Capella, 1996).
An important topic in the literature of social interaction is the closeness with the people who they interact with. Hence, Levinger and Rands (1979) state that the degree of closeness increases the interpersonal involvement. They conclude that close relationships have a much higher behavioral interdependence than for example casual acquaintances. Married people have the highest behavioral interdependence (Levinger and Rands, 1979). In a more recent article of Downie, Mageau and Koestner (2008) actually the same is formulated. These authors conclude that social interaction is much more pleasant when it takes place with family or friends than it does with acquaintances or colleagues. A reason why social interaction might be more convenient when it takes place with friends, family or relatives, is because a feeling of trust and security arises (Collins & Feeney, 2000).
Trust and security are other central topics in social interaction. The foundation for this topic is the “attachement theory”, a theory about the relationships between humans based on trust and security. John Bowlby (1969) was the first who formulated the attachment theory. His theory is based on the relationship that young children have with their parents. He states that a baby in a stressful situation is naturally seeking for security and trust with a primary caregiver or familiar people (Bowlby, 1969). Although there was a lot of criticism to his experiment, his theory about the relationship of trust and security with the closeness of a person is widely accepted in the relationship literature. Smith et. al (1999) broadens the theory of Bowlby by defining two dimensions of group attachment: anxiety and avoidance. This theory defines the level of anxiety and avoidance of people within a group. When people score low on these two dimensions, they have a feeling of security within the group. On the other hand, when people score high on one of the two dimensions, the feeling of trust and safety is not optimal. This leads to disorders in the level of social interaction (Markin and Marmarosh, 2010).
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will be taken into account in investigating the social interaction during the KEI-week via statements based on a Likert-type scale ranging from 1 to 5.
2.4
Conceptual model
In order to assess the influence of the use of Twitter on the customer experience of an event, this research makes use of the conceptual model presented in figure 3. In the conceptual model is clear that this study makes use of dependent and independent variables. In this model, the customer use of Twitter is the independent variable where the customer experience of the event is the dependent variable.
Further, the conceptual model consists of three stages. The first stage exists of the investigation of the customer use of Twitter in general on the customer experience of an event which is presented in the black boxes on top. This part of the conceptual model focuses on central question two.
The second stage of this conceptual model consists of the relationship between the customer use of Twitter in general and the three antecedents of the customer experience of an event. These relationships are presented in the second part of the conceptual model and are related to sub question 1, 2, and 3. The last stage of the conceptual model focuses on the sub question a, b, and c. This part of the model presents the relationships between the three ways of using Twitter and the three antecedents of customer experience.
26 Figure 3 / Conceptual model used in this research
2.4.1
Explanation of the relationship between Twitter and the experience of an event
In the existing literature there is not much known about the relationship between Twitter and the experience of an event. These specific relationships have never been tested before and even have never been connected to each other in the existing literature. Therefore, it is very difficult to describe the relationships between the three different forms of using Twitter and the three antecedents of the customer experience of an event. Hence, defining concrete propositions is not realistic. Accordingly, this explorative research will be done based on several sub questions which are focused on the investigation of the relationship between the use of Twitter and the customer experience of an event.
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state that there is a relationship between social relationships and the length of following people on Twitter. According to these authors, users of Twitter are active followers of other users over a longer period when there have a pre-existed form of a social relationship with each other.
As already mentioned before, Jansen and Zhang (2009) researched the influence of Twitter on the word-of- mouth. They found that about fifth of the Tweets consists information about a brand. Again one-fifth of these messages contain a feeling or sentiment about these brands, where about half of it is positive and one-third is critical. They conclude, based on these findings, that Twitter can have a huge impact on brands’ reputation. They state that Twitter has implications in gaining and providing information from and towards customers. Hence, microblogging provides a platform where customers and people can meet directly.
The two previously described studies focused on the effects of Twitter (Jansen and Zhang, 2009; Java, Finin, Song, and Tseng, 2007). The first research made clear that there might be a relationship between the use of Twitter and the level of social interaction where the second research indicates a possible relationship between the sentiment in the use of Twitter and the customer experience.
Further, other social media platforms have been investigated on their effects. A good and useful example in this case is the article of Valenzuele, Park and Kee (2008). According to these authors, the intensity of Facebook use has several positive relationships with the life satisfaction of a student. Social trust, political engagement, and civic participation are increasing when the users’ intensity of Facebook increases. According to the research about the effects of Facebook, it can be concluded that social trust and general involvement is related to the intensity of use of a social media form. Hence, there might be a relationship between the use of Twitter and the degree of social interaction during an event.
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the specialized wikis and library 2.0 is contributing to this success. In these researches about the effects of social media in general is stated that especially the provided information, learning aspects and participation is positively related to the use of Web 2.0 or social media (Ullrich, Tan, Boreau, Shen, Luo, and Shen, 2008; Giustini, 2006; McLean, Richards and Wardman, 2007; Grosseck and Holostescu, 2008). Therefore, there can be concluded that there might be a relationship between the use of Twitter and involvement.
Thus, if the findings described above are translated in a more broad way there can be concluded that it is very acceptable that there are relationships between the use of Twitter and the customer experience of an event. Based on the existing literature about the relationships in the conceptual model of this study, there can be drawn only general conclusions. Accordingly, it is only possible to state something about the use of Twitter in general because there is no research done about the frequency of use, the way of using Twitter and the sentiment in the use of Twitter specifically. So, based on the existing literature it can be stated that the use of Twitter seems to have relationships with the degree of social interaction and involvement. On the contrary, there is nothing known about the antecedent ‘enjoyment’.
2.4.2
Explanation of the interrelationships of the use of Twitter
The three different elements in the way of using Twitter receive much attention regarding the topic of monitoring the use of social media. Unfortunately, there is barely information available about the relationships between the frequency of use, the way of using Twitter, and the sentiment in the use of Twitter on each other. However, there is some research done about the influences of the separate dimensions or how they are influenced. Sadly, this is not enough to state something about the interrelationships of these elements. Nevertheless, it is still interesting to address these three elements in more detail and discuss the influences that they might have.
The sentiment of Twitter plays the most important role in monitoring the value of social media, especially in terms of business value (Glassman, 2010). The sentiment is the opinion that is ventilated through the Tweets, either positive, negative or neutral. Glassman (2010) states that the sentiment of the use of Twitter can be influenced by engaging with the users, managing the unhapppy users and build customer support.
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users who belong to this category are responsible for a large share of the total Tweets on Twitter. Saint (2010) states that about 5% of the users realize 75% of all the activity of Twitter (Saint, 2010). It can be concluded that these are the users with the highest frequency and thus the highest activity on Twitter. This also implies something about the way that people are using Twitter. About half of the Twitter users (50,4%) do not update weekly. This means that a significant share of the users are passive users and do not write frequently, something that Ostrow (2009) already found out. In a research of Lionbridge done by Singh and Lehnert (2010) a further investigation about these different types of users is done. In their research they define four kind of users. The users who use Twitter the most, for both reading and writing are called the 'addicts'. The group which does not use Twitter very often, neither for reading or posting, is called 'passive users'. Then they distinguish the middle segment into two groups. People who read often Tweets but are not that active by themselves are called 'voyeurs'. On the contrary, people who do not read very often Tweets but post relatively often are called 'special occasions'. The distribution of the Twitter users is according to this research as follows: 47% is passive user, 26% are addicts, 14% is a voyeurs, and 13% are users in terms of special occasions. It can be concluded that half of the people are passive users. This is in line with the statements about the frequency of use, described in the previous paragraph. Therefore, the possible relation between the frequency of use and the way of using is confirmed.
Based on the existing literature, it is not possible to say something about the relationships between the use of Twitter. However, there might be concluded that the frequency of using and the way of using can have a relationship.
2.4.3
Explanation of the interrelationships of the customer experience of an event
In the existing literature, a lot of articles tried to categorize and define the topic experience. Many different ways of categorizing emerged and many different definitions popped up. Voss, Roth and Chase (2008) state that the framing of the broad topic experience is that difficult because of the high level of interrelatedness. When one element is slightly improved a much better experience can be achieved (Voss, Roth and Chase, 2008). Hence, they conclude that defining exact antecedents of experience is subjective.
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contributing to the total customer experience. Therefore, the authors conclude that if a company wants to build a total customer experience, a cross-functional approach is required. Brakus, Schmitt, and Zarantonelle (2009) confirm this by stating that the main elements of brand experience, consisting of sensation, emotions, and relational factors, need to be approached in a comprehensive way called the “sensory-motor”. Mosley (2007) comes more or less with the same statement. He states that in order to create a good physical and emotional customer experience, the complete organizational culture need to be organized in that way.
From the findings of the authors described above can be concluded that the factors that create an experience are highly interrelated and therefore require a comprehensive approach. In the following part the specific relationships between involvement, enjoyment and social interaction will be addressed.
In the article of Wild, Kuiken, and Schopflocher (1995) it can be found that there is a positive correlation between experiential involvement and absorption. Here, absorption is translated in terms of aesthetic experience and ‘flow’, which means the level of total enjoyment (Csikszentmihalyi, 1997). Further, in a research on a food festival in America is found that improving the connection with a community and family and having a nice time are two motivational reasons for attending a festival which are related to each other (Cela, Knowles-Lankford and Lankford, 2007). From these findings, it might be concluded that there is a relationship between involvement and enjoyment related to creating an experience.
The relationship between involvement and social interaction is described by several authors in the existing literature. In an article focused on the effects of social interaction on the work strain (Côté, 2005) is found that people with a high level of social interaction are more involved in their work. Further, Decloe, Kaczynski and Havitz (2009) found in their article that social participation in leisure activities can have an influence on the situational involvement during such activities. They state that when people feel emotionally satisfied the motivation to participate increases.
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3
Research Design
In this research, the two central questions are “To which degree do people attending an event make use of Twitter?” and “What is the effect of the customer use of Twitter on the customer experience of an event?”. Sub questions are focused on assessing Twitters’ influence on events based on three elements: the way of using, the frequency of use, and the sentiment in the use of Twitter. Here, the customer experience of an events is also divided into three dimensions: involvement, enjoyment, and social interaction. For the second central question, the following sub questions are formulated:
1. What is the effect of the use of Twitter on the involvement during an event?
a. What is the effect of the frequency of using Twitter on the involvement during an event? b. What is the effect of the way of using Twitter on the involvement during an event? c. What is the effect of the sentiment in using Twitter on the involvement during an event?
2. What is the effect of the use of Twitter on the enjoyment during an event?
a. What is the effect of the frequency of using Twitter on the enjoyment during an event? b. What is the effect of the way of using Twitter on the customer during an event? c. What is the effect of the sentiment in using Twitter on the enjoyment during an event?
3. What is the effect of the use of Twitter on the involvement during an event?
a. What is the effect of the frequency of using Twitter on the social interaction during an event? b. What is the effect of the way of using Twitter on the social interaction during an event? c. What is the effect of the sentiment in using Twitter on the social interaction during an event?
In this chapter the research design will be presented. Accordingly, the research strategy, way of collecting and analyzing data, and the respondents in this research will be discussed.
3.1
Research strategy
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character of this study is explorative. Yin (1994) approves this with saying that central questions that can be described as “what” questions are often of an explorative character.
There are multiple ways of solving these problems: survey research, secondary data and archival sources, case studies and experiments can be used to explore the relationship (Yin, 1994). The research question in this study is examined through an online survey. For this online survey an online questionnaire tool called QuestBack is used. The questionnaire was send by mail to all the attendees of the KEI-week, a five-day event in the middle of August. The invitations were send two weeks after the KEI-week had taken place. When the questionnaire was one week online, all the people who did not fill in the questionnaire were reminded to fill it in. The online questionnaire was closed after two weeks being online.
3.2
Data Collection
Like mentioned before, the data is collected through an online questionnaire via the software program QuestBack. The questionnaire is divided in two main parts: a part focused on the evaluation of the KEI-week for the organization and a part specifically relating to this research. Therefore, 15 questions of the in total 66 questions were focused on this research. These 15 questions were again divided in two parts: the customer experience of an event and the use of Twitter. Part one consists of questions assessing the customer experience of an event followed by part two which is focused on the assessment of the use of Twitter. A complete overview of the 15 questions is presented in Appendix I.
The customer experience of an event is questioned in two levels. The first level consisted of direct statements on the degree of involvement, enjoyment, and social interaction based on a Likert-type scale ranging from 1 (strongly disagree) to 5 (strongly agree). An example of such a directly asked statement is: “To which degree did you feel involved in the KEI-week?”. The second level of questions functioned as test measure on these directly asked statements. These test questions were focused on specific elements relating to involvement, enjoyment, and social interaction found in the existing literature and described in paragraph 5, 6, and 7 of chapter 2.3. All respondents filled in these two levels of questions focused on the experience of the event.
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Tweets that are related to the KEI-week. The respondents was able to answer in five categories ranging from little use of reading and writing (1) to active use of both reading and writing (5). Last, the sentiment is assessed based on the statement: "What kind of sentiment were the Tweets that you posted or read?". The respondent could answer on a five point Likert scale, from 1 (very negative) to 5 (very positive). All the questions and possible answers are presented in Appendix I.
If a participant did not make use of Twitter in relation to the KEI-week, logically the question about the frequency, way of using and sentiment were not asked. Therefore, this part of the questionnaire is just partially filled in.
3.3
Data analysis
First, there will be investigated to which degree people make use of Twitter in relation to an event in order to answer the first central question of this research. Central question one will be answered through a simple calculation of the percentage of participants that used Twitter in relation to the KEI-week. Central question two is focused on assessing the effect of the use of Twitter on the customer experience of an event. Before answering central question two, the reliability of the statements about the antecedents of the customer experience of an event will be examined. Like described in the paragraph above, three test questions will be formulated, each belonging to the antecedents of the customer experience of an event. The aim of these questions is to state something about the reliability of the given statements. Hence, the correlations between on the one hand these test questions and on the other hand the direct statement about one of the variables of the customer experience of an event will be calculated. The higher the correlation, the more reliable the answers. The test questions are presented in Appendix I. Because all the collected data is based on a Likert-scale, the data has an ordinal character. To test the relationship between two data sets consisting of ordinal data, the Spearman Correlation Rank Coefficient is the most appropriate (Keller, 2008). In order to do this in a reliable way, SPSS will be used to make these correlations.
After, the central question two can be answered: “What is the effect of the customer use of Twitter on the customer experience of an event?”. The possible relationships between these two phenomena are described in more detail in the sub questions. When analyzing the central question and the sub questions, there can be concluded that there are three different levels of possible relationships between the use of Twitter and the customer experience of an event. All three levels require their own way of analyzing and thus their own methodology.
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2.4. Again, this data is ordinal and therefore the same method will be used as in testing these relationships as described above, the Spearman Correlation Rank Coefficient. Hence, every relationship will be tested via this method. Accordingly, this correlation calculation will be done by SPSS.
Second, the effect of the use of Twitter as a whole on the three variables of the customer experience of an event need to be investigated. These effects are questioned in sub questions 1, 2, and 3 and presented in the second stage of the conceptual model. The multiple regression method uses more than one variable to calculate the regression with a single variable. The multiple regression method makes it possible to assess the effect of one variable on a group of variables (Berger, 2003). This method adds value upon the single correlation test of Spearman because it does not simply calculate a sum of these scores. Snelgar, Brace and Kemp (2006) state that ‘human nature is inherently noisy’ and this makes it impossible to produce accurate correlations between single variables. Multiple regression methods provide a more comprehensive estimate of the effect of the total of the independent value on a set of the dependent variables (Snelgar, Brace and Kemp, 2006). Therefore, multiple regression is an extension of the single regression method described above.
In order to answer sub question 1, 2, and 3 better, a comparison of the customer experience between participants who made use of Twitter and participants who did not, will be made. This will be done by presenting the data in graphs.
Last, the effect of the use of Twitter as a whole on the total customer experience needs to examined. This question belongs directly to the second central question and to the first stage of the conceptual model. In order to test this relationship, the canonical analyses will be used. The canonical analyses is a statistical technique to assess the relationship between groups of variables. So, this method determines the correlation as a whole between two sets of data consisting of more variables. It goes one step further than the multiple regression analyses and the Spearman Rank Correlation Coefficient by finding the linear combination between the variables of one set and the variables of another set. Based on this statistical method it is possible to state if there is a casual relationship between the two researched phenomena in this research and thus answer the second central question.
3.4
Respondents
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4
Results and Discussion
In this chapter the results of the online questionnaire will be presented. First, in chapter 4.1 the findings concerning central question “To which degree do people attending an event make use of Twitter?” will be presented. These findings will be compared to the existing literature found in chapter two.
Next, the results relating to the second central question and the sub questions belonging to this question will be discussed. In order to answer the second central question, multiple statistical tests were done. First, the Spearman Correlation Rank Coefficient was used to test single relationships between different variables. After, multiple regression method was used to test the relation between one variable and a set of variables. Last, a canonical analyses was executed to test the relation between two sets of variables. Additional to these statistical tests, graphical comparisons are used to draw differences between the population who made use of Twitter and the population who did not use Twitter. This comparison is made on the experience of the three antecedents of customer experience: involvement, enjoyment, and social interaction.
After these statistical tests and graphical comparison, the results will be summarized and compared with each other in chapter 4.6. In the last part 4.7, the results will be discussed and compared to the existing literature found in chapter two.
4.1
Graphical presentation of the use of Twitter in general
In figure 4 and table 1, the usage of Twitter in relation to the KEI-week is presented. Based on the data presented above, more than 93% did not make
use of Twitter during the KEI-week where only 6,7% used Twitter. In absolute numbers this means that 1.108 did not make use of Twitter where only 80 people made use of Twitter in relation to the KEI-week. Accordingly, there can be concluded that the majority of the attendees did not make use of Twitter.
In chapter 2.2.1 the conclusion is made that especially younger people make use of Twitter. There is stated that 19% of the population between 18 and 24 have used Twitter before (Nakano, 2009). This is high percentage compared to the 7% of the total population that have used Twitter. Therefore, the proposition is made that at least 15% should use Twitter in case of the KEI-week.
