Annals of Tourism Research 48 (2014) 175–192

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Annals of Tourism Research

journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/atoures

Social media affordances: Enabling customer

engagement
Francesca Cabiddu a,⇑, Manuela De Carlo b,1, Gabriele Piccoli c,2
a
University of Cagliari, Italy
b
IULM University, Italy
c
University of Pavia, Italy

a r t i c l e i n f o a b s t r a c t

Article history: Despite the acknowledged importance of social media for customer
Received 25 January 2013 engagement, our understanding of this phenomenon is limited and
Revised 7 June 2014 new theories can help shed further light on the unique features of
Accepted 13 June 2014
social media in the tourism context. Our work contributes to the
Available online 17 July 2014
literature by adopting an affordance perspective that leads us to
Coordinating Editor: Ulrike Gretzel identify three distinctive social media affordances for customer
engagement in tourism: persistent engagement, customized
Keywords: engagement, and triggered engagement. Our work also extends
Social media prior research on customer engagement by examining the process
Affordance of recognition (proprioception, exteroception and coperception)
Multiple-case through which organizations engage customers in social media.
Customer engagement Ó 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
Recognition

Introduction

Social media are a ‘‘group of Internet-based applications which build on the ideological and tech-
nological foundations of Web 2.0 and which allow the creation and exchange of user-generated con-
tent’’ (Kaplan & Haenlein, 2010). Thus, social media are browser or mobile-based applications that
allow users to easily create, edit, access and link to content and/or to other individuals. Examples
include blogs, wikis, RSS feeds, and electronic social networks, as well as user-generated content

⇑ Corresponding author. Tel.: +39 070 6753382; fax: +39 070 6753374.
E-mail addresses: fcabiddu@unica.it (F. Cabiddu), manuela.decarlo@iulm.it (M.D. Carlo), gabriele.piccoli@unipv.it (G. Piccoli).
1
Tel.: +39 02891412815; fax: +39 02891412770.
2
Tel.: +39 0382 986219.

http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.annals.2014.06.003
0160-7383/Ó 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
176 F. Cabiddu et al. / Annals of Tourism Research 48 (2014) 175–192

aggregators, such as Yelp and TripAdvisor, and location-based applications such, as Foursquare or
MyCityWay.
More than one third of online travelers are somewhat influenced by social media, with Facebook
referring more than 15.2 million visitors to tourism websites in 2010 (PhoCusWright., 2011). TripAd-
visor-branded sites comprise the largest travel community in the world, with more than 200 million
unique monthly visitors and more than 100 million reviews and opinions for 2.5 million accommoda-
tions, restaurants, and attractions worldwide (Google, 2013). As a testament to their growing impor-
tance, the literature includes a proliferation of studies that focus on social media in tourism (Banyai,
2012; Bronner & De Hoog, 2010; Bynum Boley, Magnini, & Tuten, 2013; Hvass & Munar, 2012; Kang &
Schuett, 2013; Leung, Law, van Hoof, & Buhalis, 2013; Månsson, 2011; Xiang & Gretzel, 2010). Social
media represent a critical innovation for the tourism industry not only because they allow informa-
tional exchanges among tourists (Cox, Burgess, Sellitto, & Buultjens, 2009; Schmallegger & Carson,
2008; Xiang & Gretzel, 2010) and affect potential tourists’ experiences (Tussyadiah & Fesenmaier,
2009) but also because of their ability to spur further innovation (Hjalager, 2010). The proliferation
of social media platforms has changed how organizations communicate with customers, thus allowing
tourism service providers to pursue a variety of customer engagement strategies (Dholakia & Durham,
2010). Customer engagement is ‘‘a psychological state, which occurs by virtue of interactive customer
experiences with a focal agent/object within specific service relationships’’ (Brodie, Hollebeek, Juric, &
Ilic, 2011, p. 258). Despite the acknowledged importance of social media for customer engagement in
the tourism context (Chan & Guillet, 2011; Park & Allen, 2013; Wei, Miao, & Huang, 2013), our under-
standing remains limited and theorists call for new approaches to exploring the unique features of
social media (Majchrzak, 2009; Treem & Leonardi, 2012). This need is particularly evident in the tour-
ism context (Chan & Guillet, 2011; Hudson & Thal, 2013), where social media introduce new interac-
tive channels between providers and tourists (Hjalager, 2010). Our work contributes to the literature
utilizing affordance theory, thus considering the symbiotic relationship between human activities and
technological capabilities in the tourism context (Majchrzak & Markus, 2012). By treating the inter-
play of humans and technology as a single unit of analysis, rather than examining each separately,
the affordance perspective provides a language with which to examine the broader impacts of social
media on tourism and tourism specific innovations. In this study we focus specifically on the implica-
tions of social media affordances for customer engagement. First, we explore the process of recogni-
tion through which tourism organizations conceptualize of engaging customers through social media.
We identify three distinctive social media affordances that support customer engagement in a tourism
domain: persistent engagement, customized engagement, and triggered engagement. Then, we
explore the differences between hotels with high and low customer engagement performance with
respect to the recognition and exploitation of the three affordances. The value of our research lies
mainly in exploratory theory building and early theory testing about specific social media affordances
in the context of customer engagement in a tourism domain.

Theoretical approaches to the study of social media engagement

A number of engagement-based concepts have been proposed in different bodies of literature,

including tourism, such as customer engagement behavior (Van Doorn et al., 2010), user-generated
hotel reviews (Wei et al., 2013), customer brand engagement (Hollebeek, 2011), online consumer
engagement (Mollen & Wilson, 2010), the customer engagement cycle (Sashi, 2012), customer engage-
ment value (Kumar et al., 2010), community engagement (Hamilton & Alexander, 2013), and co-cre-
ation as a customer engagement behavior (Grissemann & Stokburger-Sauer, 2012, Cabiddu, Lui,
Piccoli, 2013). Some studies define engagement in terms of a psychological state (Mollen & Wilson,
2010; Vivek, Beatty, & Morgan, 2010), while others focus on its behavioral manifestations toward a
company or a brand (Hollebeek, 2011; Kumar et al., 2010; Van Doorn et al., 2010). The advent of social
media led to an explosion of interest in customer engagement, given the opportunities presented by
these media to facilitate close relationships with customers (Gorry & Westbrook, 2011; Hudson &
Thal, 2013). Engagement includes: browsing and consuming consumer-generated media contents,
content contribution, active participation (Yoo & Gretzel, 2011), levels of participation in online tourist
 F. Cabiddu et al. / Annals of Tourism Research 48 (2014) 175–192 177

communities (Hamilton & Alexander, 2013; Wang, Yu, & Fesenmaier, 2002), user-generated hotel
reviews as a particular type of customer engagement behavior (Park & Allen, 2013; Wei et al.,
2013), social media marketing (Chan & Guillet, 2011), and tourism blogs as elements of tourism des-
tination strategy (Schmallegger & Carson, 2008). Despite the increasing research on the adoption of
social media by the tourism industry and some evidence that confirms a return on investment for
companies that have invested in this technology (Dholakia & Durham, 2010), tourism scholars claim
that research must adopt new theoretical and methodological approaches to better explain the unique
characteristics of social media (Chan & Guillet, 2011; Hudson & Thal, 2013). Moreover, this theoretical
foundation is relatively underdeveloped, and a better understanding of the concept is essential to the
development of customer engagement strategies (Sashi, 2012).
The information systems community contributes considerably to our understanding of the ways in
which these new tools can revolutionize business practices (Aral, Dellarocas, & Godes, 2013) and cre-
ate new ways to engage customers (Wagner & Majchrzak, 2007). In particular, recent research has
shown that social media that allow users, managers, and developers to act and interact with each
other in novel ways might undermine or violate the assumptions of established theory. Consequently,
researchers must adapt these theories for applications to social media settings, or possibly develop
new ones (Kane, Alavi, Labianca, & Borgatti, 2014; Majchrzak, 2009). In other words, theorists have
called for a break with traditional information systems literature characterized by either technological
determinism or institutionalism (Markus & Silver, 2008) (Table 1).
Despite their undeniable value, the main limitation of these theories is that they focus separately
on organization and technology. The affordance perspective overcomes this limitation and comple-
ments traditional approaches to the study of social media adoption and use (Leonardi, 2011;
Leonardi & Barley, 2008; Markus & Silver, 2008; Treem & Leonardi, 2012). In line with recent calls
we adopt the affordance perspective and argue that it facilitates service providers’ understanding of
available opportunities to use social media for customer engagement. For example, Facebook provides
different possibilities for action to tourism service firms with open cultures versus those with strict
traditional views of guest privacy and confidentiality. These complex patterns of technology use
and effects are difficult (perhaps impossible) to discern if organizations and technology are treated
separately. Rather, they are best understood with simultaneous references to the socio-technical
ensemble that has emerged from organizational technology use (Leonardi, 2011).

Theoretical framework

Affordance

In the ecological psychology literature, from which the concept of affordance originates, affordance
represents the notion of ‘‘opportunities for action’’ as perceived by an organism in its environment
(Gibson, 1979). The original conceptualization of affordance simultaneously considers the properties
of an object (e.g., a hill) and of a perceiving entity (e.g., a farmer). Affordances are originally defined as
‘‘properties of the animal-environment system that determine what can be done’’ (Stoffregen, 2003, p.
124); for example, a farmer might perceive that a hill offers him the opportunity to feed grazing live-
stock, whereas a tourism entrepreneur might perceive the same hill as a surface upon which to climb,
cycle, or ski. As a possibility for action rather than the action itself, an affordance is conceptually sep-
arate from a given behavior and is merely a necessary precondition for the behavior to occur
(Majchrzak & Markus, 2012). Furthermore, it is not necessary that the entity ‘‘picks up information
about the specific affordance’’ but rather that ‘‘the possibility exists for the affordance to be realized’’
(Bærentsen & Trettvik, 2002, p. 53).
A more fundamental question pertains to the relevant abilities of the social agent (animal or
human) that coincide to determine an affordance (Chemero, 2003; Warren, 1984). An affordance
exists when the properties of an object intersect with the ability of a social agent. In the example
of online tourists, a computer or tablet has the technology features to enable obtaining tourism infor-
mation on the Web. However, those features are only activated in the hands of a potential tourist with
the ability and intention to find information online. Online information searching, an affordance, thus
178 F. Cabiddu et al. / Annals of Tourism Research 48 (2014) 175–192
Table 1
Differences between the affordance perspective and other perspectives on technology adoption.
Major perspectives on technology
adoption
Deterministic school
This is characterized either by ‘‘hard-
line determinism—the belief that
certain effects inevitably follow
from the introduction of
technology’’—or by ‘‘more
moderate contingency views,
which argue that situational factors
interact with technology to cause
outcomes’’ (DeSanctis and Poole,
1994, p. 123)
Institutional school
Technology is seen as ‘‘an opportunity
for change, rather than as a causal
agent of change,’’ wherein ‘‘people
generate social constructions of
technology’’ and ‘‘the creation,
design, and use of advanced
technologies are inextricably
bound up with the form and
direction of the social order’’
(DeSanctis and Poole, 1994, p. 124)
Social technology school (integrative
perspectives)
This school of thought advocates ‘‘soft-
line’’ determinism, or the view that
technology has structures in its
own right, but that social practices
moderate the effects of these
structures on behavior
Ecological psychology (Gibson, 1979)
‘‘Ecological psychologists believed
that animals and people directly
‘pick up’ rich information from the
objects in their environment. In
this conception, animals and
people perceive, not the properties
of objects, but rather the
‘affordances’ of objects, defined as
‘‘the acts or behaviors that are
afforded or permitted by an object,
place, or event’’ (Michaels and
Carello, 1981, p. 17)
Examples of theoretical approaches
Task-technology ‘‘fit’’ (Jarvenpaa,
1989)
Task-technology fit theory posits that
for technology to have a positive effect
on individual performance, the
capabilities of the technology should
match the tasks that the user must
perform.
In the tourism context, the capabilities
of social media should match the
tourism service provider’s strategies
to engage customers (Jarvenpaa, 1989)
Structuration theory (Giddens, 1979)
Structuration theory suggests that
people draw upon norms and
communication processes to shape
their interactions with technology. In
the context of social media use to
engage customers, this means that
there is not only a social structure of
traditions, institutions, moral codes,
and established ways of acting but
also that these can be changed when
people begin to ignore, replace, or
reproduce them differently (Giddens,
1979)
Adaptive structuration theory (AST)
(DeSanctis and Poole, 1994)
This perspective considers ‘‘the
mutual influence of technology and
social processes’’ (DeSanctis and Poole,
1994, p. 125) It also attributes human
qualities such as ‘‘intent’’ and ‘‘values’’
to artifacts
Technology affordance (Hutchby,
2001)
The affordance lens suggests that
‘‘technologies can be understood as
artifacts which may be both shaped by
and shaping of the practices human
use in interaction with, around and
through them’’ (Hutchby, 2001, p.
444)
Limitation of these theoretical
approaches to social media studies in
the tourism context
Concerns
Technology is seen as immutable but
social media are flexible tools.
Tourism service organizations that
might have assumed fixed and
immutable technology now must
consider the possibility that social
media is dynamically changing as a
basis for organizational functioning,
thus triggering consequent changes in
organizational functioning. (Yoo et al.,
2012)
Concerns
Structuration theory might be unable
to fully account for the fluid and
flexible interchanges between social
media and tourist organization
behaviors because of privileged
human behavior and the discounted
technological capacity for action of
those who produce and use the media
Concerns
Although adaptive structuration
theory considers the mutual influence
of technology and social processes,
structural features are conceptualized
as technology properties, rather than
an opportunity for action at the
intersection of technology and
tourism organizations. This means
that in this theory the notion of
appropriation refers to actual uses of
social media rather than the potential
uses
In favor
As relational concepts, affordances
facilitate the tourism service
provider’s understanding that what an
individual or tourism organization
with particular capabilities and
purposes can or cannot do with social
media might be very different from
what a different individual or
organization can do with the same
technology. Thus, the appropriation
concept refers to potential uses of
social media.
 F. Cabiddu et al. / Annals of Tourism Research 48 (2014) 175–192 179

depends on a combination of the interacting properties and abilities of the computer and the potential
tourist. The mere presence of an online information searching affordance does not imply that a person
will engage in such behavior.

Technology affordance in organizations

The notion of affordance has recently been applied to organizations to better understand how new
combinations of technology and organizational features continually create possibilities that affect
organizational innovation (Yoo, Boland, Lyytinen, & Majchrzak, 2012), form, and function (Leonardi
& Barley, 2008; Zammuto, Griffith, Majchrzak, Dougherty, & Faraj, 2007). Regarding the organizational
uses of information technology, ‘‘the concept of technology affordance refers to an action potential,
that is, to what an individual or organization with a particular purpose can do with a technology or
information system’’ (Majchrzak & Markus, 2012, p. 1). Thus, affordance is an emergent property of
the technology-organization system. As such, an affordance is neither a property of the technology
itself (e.g., uploading pictures to Facebook) nor a characteristic of the organization (e.g., a risk-averse
organizational culture), but rather an opportunity for action that exists at the intersection of these two
entities, given their respective characteristics (e.g., the ability of the hotel to use an informal language
on Facebook creates new opportunities for traditional organizations to engage customers and connect
with them instantly.). This idea suggests that, although organization and technology interact directly
with one another, they are distinct phenomena. Alone, neither organization nor technology is empir-
ically important. ‘‘But when they become imbricated—interlocked in particular sequences—they
together produce, sustain, or change either routines or technologies’’ (Leonardi, 2011, p. 149).
Although affordances exist when the possibility for action is available, the recognition of an affor-
dance is critical for the entity to enact a behavior. Because an affordance is a property of the relation-
ship between an object and a social entity (Hutchby, 2001), affordance perception requires a
combination of exteroception and proprioception. Exteroception is the interaction between an object
and an observer’s perceptual/cognitive systems, such as the awareness of a specific social medium and
its characteristics. Proprioception is any experience of the entity itself (Gibson, 1972), such as an
awareness of the observer’s characteristics and capabilities. The recognition of an affordance requires
coperception (Bærentsen & Trettvik, 2002, p. 58), or the simultaneous awareness of the available
objects and the entity’s own characteristics (Gibson, 1986); for example, it might require awareness
of the avenues for action that a specific medium provides to a specific firm. The case of Dtour, an inter-
active YouTube channel initiated by DoubleTree Hilton that allows travelers to share details about
their trips and become inspired by others’ stories to plan their own trips, is a good example of coper-
ception by the DoubleTree leadership because it demonstrates the simultaneous awareness of the
hotel’s own characteristics (proprioception) and the potential for action that the YouTube channel
provides to this hotel (exteroception). In particular, Hilton recognized YouTube as a place to showcase
great content and create meaningful engagements with travelers for the DoubleTree brand (Crocker,
2013).
Given the nature of affordance, theorists have increasingly adopted this perspective when studying
digital technologies and social media adoption and uses. Previous research shows that the affordances
of pervasive digital technologies such as social media produce innovations that are more fluid and
changing, with capabilities that can be added after their introduction (Lyytinen & Yoo, 2002; Yoo
et al., 2012). To simplify, organizations are transforming social media technologies in ways that the
designers had not originally anticipated. Evan Williams, the co-founder of Twitter, offered the best
example of this phenomenon: ‘‘Twitter lets people share moments of their life, whenever they want,
be they momentous occasions or mundane ones. [. . .] This is the primary use we saw of Twitter at the
beginning. [. . .] What we didn’t anticipate were the many, many other uses that would evolve from
this very simple system’’ (Williams, 2009). Interestingly, users invented the two main functions in
the modern Twitter feature set, @replies and #keywords; Twitter only incorporated these functions
once they had gained significant traction with users.
Other researchers have recently used the lens of affordance to review the literature regarding social
media use in organizations (Treem & Leonardi, 2012). These researchers identified the following four
basic affordances of social media: behavior visibility, persistent conversation, editability, and
180 F. Cabiddu et al. / Annals of Tourism Research 48 (2014) 175–192

associations that enable community building and access to expertise. All of these affordances explain
how social media have determined a shift in the manner in which organizational knowledge is shared.
Other scholars, while deepening this initial study, have theorized that social media provide the follow-
ing four affordances that represent different ways to engage in knowledge-sharing conversations in
the workplace: metavoicing, triggered attending, network-informed associating, and generative
role-taking (Majchrzak, Faraj, Kane, & Azad, 2013).
Although tourism scholars have used the affordance concept (Edensor, 2006; Vosu & Kaaristo,
2009), we are not aware of any study that has mapped social media affordances in tourism.
Given the unprecedented levels of fluidity and malleability that characterize social media use in
tourism, an understanding of the innovative uses of this technology requires an explicit analysis of
the symbiotic relationship between organizations’ actions and technology capabilities in a specific
domain of action (Majchrzak et al., 2013). We chose the hospitality sector for two reasons. First, hos-
pitality products and services are primarily designed to satisfy the needs and wants of business and
leisure travelers. The specific set of activities that characterized the hospitality sector provide a good
environment in which to study social media affordances. Second, the use of social media and online
review have transformed consumer decision making in the hospitality industry (Park & Allen, 2012;
Xiang & Gretzel, 2010). The current levels of innovation and attention to social media exhibited by
hoteliers provide a good environment in which to study social media affordances. We therefore
devised an exploratory study to identify social media affordances in the hospitality sector to provide
an early map.

Methods

Research design and setting

Given the novelty of our work and our intention to identify social media affordances that are cur-
rently recognized and realized by practicing managers in hospitality context, we conducted an induc-
tive, multiple-case study (Eisenhardt, 1989). We collected data from various sources, including
archival data from both internal and external organizational sources; semi-structured interviews;
and informal follow-ups with e-mails and phone calls. In an attempt to study both leisure and busi-
ness hotels as well as successful and unsuccessful properties, we built an initial database of 1,595
hotels by inventorying all lodging operators in a major urban area (where business tourists comprise
70% of the customer base) and in a region that represents a predominantly leisure destination (60% of
the customer base). For all inventoried firms, we collected data about social media presence (see
Table 2). We split the sample into two subgroups based on the ability of the companies to engage cus-
tomers in social media and their successes in building a following (e.g., Facebook fans). The process of
building customer engagement in a social media context constitutes a customer engagement cycle
based on the following seven stages: connection, interaction, satisfaction, retention, commitment,
advocacy, and engagement (Sashi, 2012). Given the exploratory nature of our paper, we did not ana-
lyze the cognitive and emotional aspects of engagement (Bowden, 2009) but instead focused our
attention on the core of the engagement construct, interaction between customers and organizations
(Brodie, Roderick, Illic, Juric, & Hollebeek, 2011). Based on academic literature (Sashi, 2012) and man-
agerial reports (Haven, 2007), we developed a combined measure of engagement with four items: the

Table 2
Metrics of customer engagement.

Hotels Hotels Facebook Average likes per Average responses per Twitter
Fans post post followers
Business Destination 669 6026 16 1 401
(total)
Leisure Destination 926 18167 8 3 177
(total)
Total 1595 24193 24 4 578
 F. Cabiddu et al. / Annals of Tourism Research 48 (2014) 175–192 181

number of Facebook fans, the average responses per post, the average likes per post, and the number
of Twitter followers. We chose not to refer to the number of tweets because the average number of
tweets per day was very low.
Within the designed sampling frame, we pilot-tested potential interview questions with the exec-
utive teams of two hotels at the forefront of technology adoption. We sought preliminary insights into
social media and their associated implementations. An analysis of these interview transcripts yielded
the intriguing observation that, despite the managers’ abilities to successfully operate online, they had
little knowledge regarding the ways in which social media could be incorporated into their activities.
They were not involved in the adoption of social media, as this activity was usually delegated to the
staff. We then used the findings from this exploratory phase to develop specific interview protocols for
the appropriate individuals in the organization: the chief marketing officers and digital marketing
staff.
After finalizing the interview protocol, we selected a research sample based on a polar-type
research design (Eisenhardt, 1989) by choosing hotels that represented extreme cases. The extent
to which hotels interact with customers is the most basic dimension along which our cases could vary,
so we began formal interviews with the two highest-performing hotels in our database (not those
used for the pilot test). We also pair-matched two hotels from the low-performing set that were very
similar to the top performers in terms of star rating, location, customer profile and property profile
(Tables 3 and 4).
The interviews ranged from one to two hours in length, and each was recorded and transcribed ver-
batim to generate approximately 100 pages of text. The interview guide contained three main sec-
tions. The first section included open-ended questions that enabled informants to provide an
overview of their company’s history, competitors and customer base. The second section focused on
the type of social media utilized by the firm. When we asked about the type of social media utilized
we try also to understand what type of potential they can see in social media. The third section
focused on specific organizational initiatives (e.g., create a Twitter account, launch a Facebook cam-
paign) related to social media implementation in which the informant was directly involved. In the
second and third sections, we targeted questions to specific experiences, performed activities and inci-
dents that had actually occurred in an attempt to gain information about real behaviors during specific
events rather than vague descriptions and ideas.

Data analysis

Our analysis proceeded through different rounds of coding with Nvivo 9. In the first round, we cre-
ated a provisional list of codes that were derived from the conceptual framework and the specific

Table 3
Summary sample data.

Hotel Star Rooms Positioning Location N. of interviews N. of interviewees

HP1 5 399 Business Milan 2 2
LP1 5 244 Business Milan 2 2
HP2 4 90 Leisure Fordongianus 2 2
LP2 4 48 Leisure Iglesias 2 2

HP: high-performing LP: low-performing.

Table 4
Quantitative detail of social media used.

Hotel Facebook fans Average. like per post Average responses per post Twitter followers
HP1 5,317 14.5 0.92 401
LP1 709 1 0 0
HP2 5,424 2.5 1.6 115
LP2 373 0 0.25 8

HP: high-performing LP: low-performing.

182 F. Cabiddu et al. / Annals of Tourism Research 48 (2014) 175–192

Table 5
Definitions and sample codes for exteroception, proprioception and coperception.

Category Definitional elements Phrase

Exteroception Perception of social media characteristics Facebook is . . .
The followers are . . .
Twitter is . . .
Tripadivisor is . . .
Proprioception Perception of hotel characteristics Our food is. . .
Our customers want . . .
Our hotel is . . .
Coperception Simultaneous awareness of social media and We create . . .
hotel characteristics relative to possible action We use Facebook for . . .
We could run campaigns . . .

Table 6
Sample coding for exteroception, proprioception and coperception.

Category Illustrative quote Hotel

Exteroception ‘‘Within [Facebook] Fan Page, you cannot send private messages and you cannot ask for friendship. It LP2
only works to collect users ‘Like.’ With the private profile, you can send friendship requests’’
Proprioception ‘‘[Our hotel] is a very traditional, very classic environment, deeply tied to traditions and beliefs from HP1
the last century’’
Coperception ‘‘I opened an account on Mobnotes in order to understand how this type of thing worked. I said ‘‘Oh, LP1
it’s a tool that I can use to let people who are in the area know what’s happening, which is great for
the [name of the hotel]’’
Coperception ‘‘We have created a page on our website from which Facebook sent back an offer targeted to people HP2
coming from Milan or Rome since these are the two destinations that fly to Oristano, and we had a
good. . .a good response’’

research questions created for the study (Miles & Huberman, 1994). To improve the reliability of our
analysis, in the second round of coding, each author independently identified themes that emerged
from the interview (Krippendorff, 2004). We then analyzed the transcripts in joint coding meetings,
wherein we compared the independent codes and determined the final codes to use on each tran-
script. The provisional list of codes thus evolved (e.g., new codes were added and some codes were
changed) throughout the data analysis process, based on ongoing comparisons between the newly
analyzed transcripts and previously coded data (Strauss & Corbin, 1998). To analyze the potential
actions afforded to hotels by social media, we measured instances of exteroception, proprioception,
and coperception by identifying distinctive phrases used by our informants to refer specifically to their
uses and intended uses of social media (Tables 5 and 6). Because these constructs are by definition
perceptual in nature, we used measures based on the key informants’ beliefs and stated attitudes. Spe-
cifically, the use of descriptors such as ‘‘Facebook is,’’ ‘‘followers are,’’ or ‘‘Foursquare does,’’ which
refer to the medium our informants use or are aware of, implies exteroception. The use of possessive
adjectives such as ‘‘our food is,’’ ‘‘our hotel is,’’ and ‘‘our customer needs are,’’ when spoken in the con-
text of a firm’s characteristics, implies proprioception. Finally, use of the first person plural verb form
such as ‘‘we create,’’ ‘‘we intend to,’’ or ‘‘we use Facebook for,’’ when associated with an enacted,
planned or possible social media initiative by the hotel, implies coperception. It is important to note
that coperception does not imply action. Thus, when measuring actions, we used both specific activ-
ities and planned or possible behaviors (e.g., ‘‘we could run campaigns’’). We then inferred the hotel’s
perception from the use of these phrases and the identified word constructions.
Based on our interviews, we computed inter-rater reliability (k = 0.81) as an initial assessment of
the coding scheme validity and the coding process reliability. Next, we discussed and negotiated dis-
agreements, fine-tuning the coding procedure accordingly. With the coding scheme in place, we read
the cases independently to form our own views of each affordance mentioned in the transcripts. Dur-
ing a second pass, we reviewed the transcripts and coded potential activities into action categories
(e.g., persistent engagement). Although informants might have mentioned the same activity multiple
 F. Cabiddu et al. / Annals of Tourism Research 48 (2014) 175–192 183

times and different informants might have referred to the same initiatives, we coded these mentions
consistently to name them. After completing this second round of coding, we focused on identifying
the most descriptive name for the identified class of similar initiatives. These were our identified affor-
dances. Throughout the analysis, we also used informal follow-up e-mails and phone calls to clarify
points of confusion and corroborate our emerging theories. These documents offered a way to cross-
check the interviews and control for retrospective bias.

Results

Our analyses point to three social media affordances that are leveraged by tourism service provid-
ers to engage customers. In this section, we first discuss the process of new affordance recognition and
exploitation. We then describe the three affordances introduced and effectively realized by our infor-
mants (Fig. 1).
Because an affordance is a property of a relationship between an object and a social entity
(Hutchby, 2001) that is well anchored to a specific domain (Majchrzak & Markus, 2012), we expected
that a comparison of similar hotels that performed either well or poorly with regard to customer
engagement would shed light on the patterns of social media affordance recognition. This expectation
was confirmed, as high-performing hotels have at their disposal a wider array of action possibilities
that have emerged from the relationship between social media technology features and hotel charac-
teristics. Specifically, when asked to describe their strategies and the potential offered by social media
within that context, low-performing hotels focused the bulk of their attention on exteroception and
proprioception. In other words, they articulated the characteristics of the technology and, to a lesser
extent, their own organizational idiosyncrasies; however, they generally did not emphasize an expla-
nation of the relationships between the two factors (coperception). Conversely, high-performing
hotels placed significant attention and emphasis on coperception and often described the intersection
of social media functionalities with their own unique organizational characteristics. Not only did they
engage in coperception more often (thirty-seven versus seven mentions), but the relative number of
mentions (i.e., emphasis) of coperception was 2.47 times higher than that of low-performing hotels
(Table 7).
We found also that those organizations that engage in coperception realize what we term an
action-reaction process. We use this term to highlight the interaction between the different steps of
this process. An action-reaction is the back and forth process of coperception through which the staff
in charge of digital marketing or the chief marketing officer gains clarity as to the tangible initiatives
the affordance makes possible in the organization.

Fig. 1. Recognition and realization of affordances enabling customer engagement.

184 F. Cabiddu et al. / Annals of Tourism Research 48 (2014) 175–192

Table 7
*
Relative emphasis on proprioception, exteroception and coperception.

Hotels Proprioception Exteroception Coperception

HP1 7 12% 26 44% 26 44%
LP1 3 12% 18 69% 5 19%
HP2 2 7% 17 56% 11 37 %
LP2 6 40% 7 47% 2 13%
HP 9 10% 43 48% 37 42%
LP 9 22% 25 61% 7 17%
*
The rows add up to 100% and not (as by convention) the columns.

Table 8
Action-reaction process toward coperception.

Steps Description Illustrative example

Initiative triggered by exteroception
Approval triggered by proprioception
Adjustment (balancing exteroception
with proprioception)
Reflection (balancing exteroception
with proprioception)
Evaluation (balancing exteroception
with proprioception)
Coperception
The staff in charge of digital marketing
or the chief marketing officer takes or
proposes an initiative to utilize a
specific social medium
The staff begin utilizing social media
after approval by other people
After a period of trial and error, people
involved redefine success, redefine
what can be accomplished, and
redefine their actions
People involved reflect alone about the
results
People involved evaluate the results
Hotels begin to utilize social media and
to incorporate in their way of doing
business
‘‘We could do something on facebook’’
‘‘Are we already working on it? Yes?
Well, in that case, okay’’
‘‘It took me two months to convince
myself of a Facebook campaign...and now
if someone suggests something
innovative that I don’t know about, I ask
them to explain it to me; I understand it
and everything moves ahead more
quickly. So, it was a sort of change of
mentality in some ways’’
‘‘We can’t allocate 50,000 € to Facebook,
also because I don’t really get a Return on
Investment’’
‘‘I definitely have 6.000 fans on
Facebook’’
‘‘Yes, we have created a page on our
website from which Facebook sent back
an offer especially for people coming
from Milan or Rome since these are the
two destinations that fly into our city,
and we had a good. . .a good response’’

Our exploratory analysis shows that the action-reaction process underpinning social media coper-
ception is subdivided into five main steps: initiative; approval, adjustment, reflection and evaluation
(Table 8).
When all of these phases are accomplished, the hotels begin to incorporate social media in their
way of doing business (coperception).
When hotels are unable to move the action-reaction process in the direction of coperception, the
affordance is not realized (Table 9).
As defined earlier, an affordance represents an opportunity for action that emerges at the intersec-
tion of technology functionality and organizational characteristics (Majchrzak & Markus, 2012;
Zammuto et al., 2007). For this reason, we did not expect all hotels in our sample to recognize the
same opportunities. Our informants conceptualized a combined set of three classes of opportunities
realized by their firms: persistent engagement, customized engagement, and triggered engagement.
The exploitation of social media affordances was widespread within our sample, with all firms refer-
ring to at least two affordances (Table 10). Next, we describe each affordance and highlight the asso-
ciated enabling social media characteristics.
 F. Cabiddu et al. / Annals of Tourism Research 48 (2014) 175–192 185

Table 9
Action-reaction process without coperception.

Steps Description Illustrative example

Initiative triggered by exteroception
Approval triggered by proprioception
Adjustment (balancing exteroception
with proprioception)
Reflection (balancing exteroception
with proprioception)
Evaluation (balancing exteroception
with proprioception)
Coperception
The staff in charge of digital marketing
or the chief marketing officer takes or
proposes an initiative to utilize a
specific social medium
The staff begin utilizing social media
after approval by other people
After a period of trial and error, people
involved redefine success, redefine
what can be accomplished, and
redefine their actions
People involved reflect alone about the
results
People involved evaluate the results
Hotels begin to utilize social media and
to incorporate in their way of doing
business
‘‘I decided to open a fan page on
facebook’’
‘‘I talked about it with the general
manager, but Facebook was still
relatively new to her. We pointed out to
her that I had created a profile on
Facebook, but without going into detail’’
‘‘We change the fan page on a company
page’’
‘‘I don’t really know if the Facebook
company page help us to improve our
results’’
Nothing
Nothing

Table 10
Affordance realized by firms.

Hotels Persistent engagement Customized engagement Triggered engagement

HP1 1 20% 0 0% 1 20%
LP1 6 55% 0 0% 4 36%
HP2 1 5% 4 21% 2 11%
LP2 2 50% 2 50% 0 0%
HP 2 12% 4 11% 3 15%
LP 8 52% 2 25% 4 18%

Persistent engagement

Persistent engagement represents the possibility of maintaining an ongoing dialogue with custom-
ers, even when they are not physically at the property. As the marketing director of the urban high
performer1 (HP1) hotel stated: ‘‘What we try to do through social media is to bring a local clientele to
the property by initiating a dialogue with [the local community].’’ The social media functionalities that
enable this affordance are multi-media content creation and interactions in public or semi-public elec-
tronic venues. For example, connected hotels can post videos on a YouTube channel or images on Pin-
terest that allow customers to provide their feedback and impressions through commentaries or
voting instruments (e.g., ‘‘Likes’’). The persistent engagement affordance addresses the immediacy
of conversations, as well as their reach and scale, thus enabling a degree of real-time interaction that
was previously simply unattainable by hotels. There is virtually no delay between an event occur-
rence—for example, a new floral arrangement is created in the lobby and its picture is posted on Pin-
terest—and the time at which it is shared with interested customers. However, this technology is not
neutral and unchanging. Persistent engagement is available to tourism service firms that have condu-
cive characteristics (e.g., a rooftop pool where local customers can gather for sunset aperitifs). The per-
sistent engagement affordance was widely recognized among our informants. Respondents felt that
persistent engagement allowed hotels to create lively relationships with their customer bases and
to become part of conversations that would otherwise occur outside of the firm’s area of influence.
186 F. Cabiddu et al. / Annals of Tourism Research 48 (2014) 175–192

Customized engagement

Customized engagement represents the possibility of interacting with customers based on prior
knowledge of individual-level information. This information includes the customer’s preferences, past
conversations, networks of relationships and influences. The value of customized engagement stems
from the possibility to effectively personalize organizational communication and service, thus treating
customers as individuals.
An example of customized engagement was provided by the staff in charge of digital marketing at
one high-performing leisure hotel: ‘‘Even customers who have stayed here, who have given permission to
utilize their contact information; we can ask them to be friends on FB and therefore we can keep in touch
with them and offer personalized service.’’ The social media functionalities that enable this affordance
are those allowing personal profile visibility (e.g., Facebook pages) and personal connections (social
graphs), preference monitoring (e.g., Foursquare check-ins, TripAdvisor reviews), and ongoing mea-
surements of influence (e.g., Klout scores). For example, when a customer checks into a hotel, the staff
has the ability to immediately see the previous check-ins, tips and reviews from this customer. This
affordance is at the heart of some recent industry innovations. For example, while leveraging the abil-
ity to measure a person’s social media impact, the Las Vegas Palms Hotel and Casino launched an influ-
encer reward program in the fall of 2010, The Klout Klub. During registration, The Palms might
upgrade or provide special treatment to patrons with high Klout scores in an effort to receive favorable
mentions in the future. Respondents felt that the customized engagement affordance increased the
potential depth of interactions that hotels have historically experienced with their guests, as well
as the a-prior knowledge of their guests’ individual interests and preferences.

Triggered engagement

Triggered engagement represents the possibility of instigating customer encounters based on an

external, customer-initiated event. This affordance can help firms to develop innovative practices
and discover new value-creation opportunities that are prompted by customer initiatives or cus-
tomer-initiated interactions. As the staff in charge of digital marketing at one of the low-performing
business hotels stated: ‘‘If a customer in the bar tweets, I can communicate with that person in real-time.’’
The social media functionalities that enable this affordance are social graphing instruments that sup-
port inter-user connectivity and permit activity tracking. Social media also allow hotels to set thresh-
olds for monitoring individual activity and to be notified when certain events take place. For example,
large venues that host conferences often monitor tweeter keywords referring to the property or the
currently hosted conference in an effort to detect and react to valuable events and feedback (e.g., con-
ference attendees that complain about room temperatures or slow Internet connectivity). Respon-
dents felt that the triggered engagement affordance creates the opportunity for a degree of
responsiveness that was previously simply unattainable by hotels. With triggered engagement, the
hotel staff can spring into action immediately in response to a guest-initiated event.

Discussion

With this study, we have contributed to the growing literature on social media in tourism. Specif-
ically, we used the affordance perspective to understand the unique features of social media in the
tourism context (Chan & Guillet, 2011; Hudson & Thal, 2013). Thus, the attention is on customer
engagement and the role of affordances in enabling it. In this section, we will first discuss our findings
with respect to the differential propensities of high-performing and low-performing hotels to recog-
nize affordances. We will then discuss the paradoxical effects that each of the three affordances iden-
tified by our informants might have on a firm’s customer engagement efforts. Previous research has
suggested that the effects of social media are neither predictable nor unequivocal (Asur &
Huberman, 2010). This non-deterministic notion is central to the affordance perspective and consis-
tent with our results. We thus contribute to a theoretical understanding of this lack of mono-direc-
tional results, as we found that social media affordances were idiosyncratically distributed among
 F. Cabiddu et al. / Annals of Tourism Research 48 (2014) 175–192 187

hotels within a homogenous set of classes. To simplify, while we were able to clearly categorize the
initiatives described by our informants in three specific affordance classes (i.e., 1, 2, 3) the actual ini-
tiatives were different. For example, we can categorize these different initiatives in the permanent
engagement affordance class: a) ‘‘What we try to do through the social media is to bring local clientele
here, that is, from Milan, and start a dialogue with them’’ (the chief marketing officer of a LP hotel). b)
‘‘It [Facebook] has the same economic function as a classified in a newspaper. . ..in the sense that. . .I
can get to a general market on FB’’ (the chief marketing officer of an HP hotel).
We will also highlight fruitful areas of future research in this evolving area of scientific inquiry.
Our results lend support to the notion that high-performing hotels have a superior ability to iden-
tify social media affordances through coperception. To clarify, high-performing hotels are systemati-
cally better able to identify opportunities for action in the social media space, compared to their low-
performing competitors. This finding corroborates the notion that coperception of affordances is a
necessary prerequisite for action (Gibson., 1986). The innovation literature has shown that organiza-
tions search for innovations in a landscape of possible opportunities and then engage in a selection
process to prioritize their actions (Tushman, Anderson, Quarterly, & Sep, 2007). Through a copercep-
tion of technological capabilities and the firm’s characteristics, an organization can articulate the
affordance (Zammuto et al., 2007) and successfully implement a specific social media initiative. As
we discussed earlier, social media represent a prototypical example of generative digital artifacts
(Yoo, 2012). Specifically, these media are more extensible and less controllable than earlier genera-
tions of information technologies. The wider impacts that this dynamic technology push on tourism
innovations still require investigation (Hjalager, 2010). Our exploratory findings regarding the differ-
ent ways to engage customers demonstrate how flexibility is crucial to an understanding of the poten-
tial impacts of social media on innovation processes and organizational science. Under these
circumstances, the willingness and ability to engage in experimentation and learning might be critical
to success (Bærentsen & Trettvik, 2002).

The mixed effects of social media affordances on customer engagement

In this section, we will address each of the three social media affordances for customer engagement
that were introduced by our informants and focus on what we still do not understand about these
affordances and their effects. By treating the interaction between human action and technological
capability as the unit of analysis (Hutchby, 2001), the affordance perspective will provide specific
social media affordances (Majchrzak et al., 2013) in the context of customer engagement in a tourism
domain. We will organize this discussion around each of the three affordances identified by our infor-
mants (persistent engagement, customized engagement and triggered engagement) and will describe
the positive and negative aspects of each.
Persistent engagement enables organizations to maintain an ongoing dialogue with customers by
exploiting the connectivity, content creation and sharing functionalities of social media. Our infor-
mants mentioned initiatives that were grounded in the persistent engagement affordance to describe
how they sought to establish dialogues with guests and prospective guests. Persistent engagement
might have positive and negative effects on customer engagement. On the positive side, it might lead
to rapid content co-creation as the staff and mainly customers contribute content to shared and semi-
public social media venues. Moreover because persistent engagement relies on connectivity, content is
created when customers comment on the firm’s postings or react to fellow customers’ contributions
(Park & Allen, 2013). These interactions can develop a sense of community and shared purpose that
heightens previous and potential guests’ emotional involvement, thus strengthening their ties with
the organization (or the destination). The degree of co-creation affects customer satisfaction, loyalty
and spending (Grissemann & Stokburger-Sauer, 2012). Furthermore, through persistent engagement,
the firm can foster a deeper knowledge about the product, location, and surroundings in customers.
This knowledge development can occur in both the quantity and quality dimensions. In the first
dimension, persistent engagement leads to the availability of significant amounts of multimedia con-
tent (e.g., recipes for local drinks). In the second dimension, given its crowdsourced nature, the guest-
created content is generally considered to be less biased and more trustworthy (Sparks & Browning,
2011; Bronner & De Hoog, 2010).
188 F. Cabiddu et al. / Annals of Tourism Research 48 (2014) 175–192

While persistent engagement can be quite beneficial for organizations in the tourism industry, it
might also prove detrimental. Persistent engagement is naturally a public action, and social media
drastically limit the firm’s control over the content, thus allowing virtually unlimited openness and
message sharing (Kaplan & Haenlein, 2010; Ward & Ostrom, 2006). Management under these condi-
tions is a novel challenge for organizations and is tantamount to management in a state of constant,
real-time media exposure, in which every guest is a potential reporter and every action is almost
immediately visible to a wide audience (Treem & Leonardi, 2012). Thus, the detriment and challenges
of managing negative comments or persistent negativity and the ability to balance both the openness
of content and the speed at which it disseminates through the community is critical. The potential
scrutiny and publicity, the lack of control in this context, and the lack of tested principles for persistent
engagement in social media (Wei et al., 2013) might lead organizations to a sort of paralysis. This is
not unlike the phenomenon uncovered by organizational theory researchers whereby organizations
that face uncertainty and the inability to properly evaluate the cost-benefits of their actions might
become static and postpone investment decisions (Bourgeois & Eisenhardt, 1987).
Although recent studies have provided an initial understanding of virtual communities (Wang
et al., 2002) and the importance of customers as operant resources in value co-creation processes
within the tourism industry (Hamilton & Alexander, 2013; Shaw, Bailey, & Williams, 2011), the mixed
potential effects of the customer engagement affordance suggest that as tourism scholars, we should
reexamine the established processes of customer communication and influence. Given that the evolu-
tion and widespread adoption of personal information technologies will continue unabated, we expect
that the engagement in the context of brand communities (Brodie, Hollebeek, et al., 2011; Brodie,
Roderick, et al., 2011) and the opening of brands to greater customer influence will only accelerate
(Piccoli, 2010). Therefore, we should address research questions about the changing natures of
firm-customer relationships. We need to ask the following questions: what are the roles of firms, cus-
tomers and partners in developing the perception of a tourism brand? What are the roles of firms, cus-
tomers and partners in generating demand for a specific firm’s product or for a destination? How
should players in the tourism industry organize to best navigate the democratization of customer
relationships?

Customized engagement

Customized engagement represents the possibility of interacting with customers on the basis of
prior knowledge of individuals’ information through personal profile visibility, connections, prefer-
ences, and the influences of current and prospective customers. Customized engagement can have
mixed effects on customer engagement. On the positive side, it may lead to achieving a high level
of customization by monitoring the personal information posted by social media members and may
help to obtain an in-depth understanding of each customer’s needs (Sigala, 2003). Previous studies
have addressed the beneficial effects of service personalization (Ball, Coelho, & Vilares, 2006) and have
shown that customers are more satisfied when an organization can better target its message through
accurate recommendations and relevant content (Liang, Lai, & Ku, 2007). The wealth of personal data
shared by customers through social media could be instrumental to the provision of tailored messages
and services. Moreover, through customized engagement, a firm can reinforce a customer’s sense of
identification with the firm’s own social media communities (Qu & Lee, 2011).
While customized engagement can be quite beneficial for tourism organizations, it may also prove
detrimental. Significant research has addressed the potential negative outcomes that stem from pri-
vacy concerns (Leung et al., 2013) when organizations are perceived as overstepping their boundaries
(Spangler, Hartzel, & Gal-Or, 2006). This is a particularly difficult area to manage in social media
because individuals volunteer personal information in public spaces, but an individual’s perception
is that they are providing such information to ‘‘friends.’’ Consequently, the use of this information
by hotels might hamper, rather than consolidate, their relationships and ability to engage with
customers.
As more and more interpersonal relationships move to the information space, the customized
engagement affordance will increase both the potential rewards and risks of customer engagement
in social media. Tourism scholars have an opportunity to be at the forefront of research in this area
 F. Cabiddu et al. / Annals of Tourism Research 48 (2014) 175–192 189

because travel is a deeply emotional product and personalization has been a hallmark of hospitality
and tourism since its inception. We need to ask the following questions: what are the perceived
boundaries of personal information and personal information uses in service exchanges? Are there
systematic differences between customer segments with respect to their propensities to welcome cus-
tomized engagement efforts? How should a firm structure its internal and boundary-spanning oper-
ations to ensure the optimal management of customer relationships in public or semi-public social
media venues?

Triggered engagement

Triggered engagement represents the possibility of instigating customer encounters that are based
on an external, customer-initiated event by leveraging social graphing instruments and the ability to
set and manage alerts. Triggered engagement could have mixed effects on customer engagement. On
the positive side, it might improve firms’ abilities to interact with customers at crucial times during
service encounters. An individual’s ability to make optimal decisions in a given situation (e.g., a service
encounter) is limited by the limited capacity of the human senses to perceive environmental cues and
events (Chauhan, 2007). Organizations that miss important environmental signals are more vulnera-
ble to surprises and less able to satisfy customers’ needs (Zeithaml, Berry, & Parasuraman, 1993). We
posit that social media could extend the boundaries of organizational perceptions through triggered
engagement. Thus, social media could potentially serve as intelligence gathering and alerting mecha-
nisms to help overcome the existing limitations of a firm’s perceptual systems. For example, the airline
Jet Blue (Sebastian, 2013) and the restaurant chain Morton’s Steakhouse (Morphy, 2011) have recently
gained significant attention from the press for their proactive uses of Twitter as a customer service
alert system. Organizations that recognize and successfully leverage triggered engagement can mini-
mize their reaction times and limit expectation-delivery gaps, thereby improving service (Zeithaml,
Parasuraman, & Malhotra, 2002). Triggered engagement may also help tourism organizations to
increase their anticipation capabilities and become more proactive because managers can analyze
the gathered data over time to uncover trends and systematic problems (Leung et al., 2013).
While triggered engagement could be a powerful opportunity for organizations that seek to be
more proactive, it could also prove detrimental. Privacy concerns, such as those discussed for the cus-
tomized engagement affordance, might also limit the effectiveness of triggered engagement. This con-
cern is partially mitigated by the fact that triggered engagement might not always rely on personal
information and would therefore limit the perceived sensitive nature of the transaction. However, pro-
active responses to information that a guest has not directly aimed at the firm might trigger a ‘‘big
brother’’ effect and annoy (or enrage) customers. Moreover, given the uncertain information quality
of public social media data, it might be hard to verify the credibility of a message (Buhalis, 1998),
which could lead to operational and service failures.
The mixed potential effects of the triggered engagement affordance suggest that tourism scholars
have a great opportunity to re-evaluate the research on intelligence gathering and market orientation
(Narver & Slater, 1990). Specifically, we need to understand how intelligence gathering changes when
organizations have real-time access to customer communications. How should firms organize their
intelligence gathering efforts? Beyond the information-gathering component, we need to understand
how to optimally utilize the information without overstepping sensible boundaries. We also need to
understand how different customer characteristics influence the perception of a ‘‘big brother’’ effect.
Some customers might value an organization’s ability to serve them proactively, while others might
perceive the organization as intrusive. What communications are likely to engender one or the other
reaction?

Conclusion

In this study, we sought to contribute to the understanding of social media and social media use in
the tourism industry. We have accomplished this by introducing the theoretical lens of affordance to
this area of scholarly inquiry. Affordance is a powerful concept in analyses of socio-technical phenom-
190 F. Cabiddu et al. / Annals of Tourism Research 48 (2014) 175–192

ena and is new to research within the tourism context. Affordance enables the simultaneous under-
standing of technology and organizational characteristics, and social media use in the tourism indus-
try represents an optimal context for the affordance perspective. We extended prior research on
customer engagement (Wei et al., 2013) by examining the process of recognition (proprioception,
exteroception and coperception) through which tourism organizations begin to engage customers
in a social media context. Finally, we identify three distinctive social media affordances that support
customer engagement in a tourism domain: persistent engagement, customized engagement, and
triggered engagement.
Despite the generally positive attitudes of our informants, we argue that these affordances have
paradoxical effects and could both hamper and contribute to customer engagement.
This study also has its limitations. The first limitation is related to the research context. The qual-
itative and empirical data analysis was undertaken with data collected from a small number of com-
panies. To further foster the multidisciplinary debate yet maintain a link with practice, future
researchers may want to explore gathering data from a larger sample. This further research could
refine or expand upon our findings in several ways. Larger scale survey research could be used to tri-
angulate our data and statistically confirm our findings at a more general level. In addition, studies in
different organizational or industry settings could potentially increase the applicability of the theoret-
ical findings.
In the discussion, we proposed theoretical arguments that extended our findings to provide a basis
for future empirical research. While our work is theoretical in nature, it also has implications of inter-
ested to tourism and hospitality industry operators. Specifically, we contribute to understanding the
dynamics of guest engagement through social media. Our findings underline the fact that operators
must be keenly aware of the interplay between the technology features of social media and the
goal-oriented actions.
We believe that work in the area of social media holds great promise for tourism scholars who seek
to advance our theoretical understanding of the role of social media in tourism ventures, as well as to
make tangible contributions to management practices in this industry.

Acknowledgement

Financial support from the Regional Law 7 Agoust 2007, n., 41 ‘‘Promozione della ricerca scientifica
e dell’innovazione tecnologica in Sardegna’’ is gratefully acknowledged.

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