Impact of Social Media Marketing in Selecting Sri Lanka as a Tourist Destination

Abstract

Social media provides a platform for the tourism service providers to market their products and services at a lower cost. As tourist arrival to Sri Lanka has been increasing, interested stakeholders have started using social media marketing as a tool to promote Sri Lanka. Since only a limited number of studies have been carried out on the impact of social media marketing on the Sri Lankan tourism industry, this study was carried out to address this research gap. Subsequently, the study examines the impact of social media marketing, social media marketing content and social media marketing characteristics on the decision of travel destinations of tourists arriving in Sri Lanka. After studying many researches that have been carried out in other countries, the conceptual framework was developed based on the available literature. Simple random sampling technique was applied to choose the respondents from the population and an online survey was carried out to collect data using a Google survey questionnaire and SPSS was utilized for data analysis. Based on the results, it was found that information, perceived usefulness, perceived ease of use and electronic word of mouth has a positive relationship with purchase decision. However, perceived risk shows a negative relationship.