Relación entre los beneficios y la obtención de engagement de los usuarios en la comunicación de las redes sociales del sector hotelero

Abstract

With the growing power of online consumers and the increased penetration of the internet around the world, online brand communities have formed an important communication platform between companies and consumers. These social media have offered consumers the opportunity to share opinions, recommendations and experiences through comments, images or videos with other users, which can be read and commented among them. In this way, this research intends to analyze if the perceived benefits are related to the obtaining of commitment or engagement on the part of the users in the social networks of the hotels. For this, a quantitative analysis has been carried out by means of a questionnaire addressed to the followers of the social networks of hotels or hotel chains. Thus, 4 hypotheses have been proposed to analyze whether the 4 identified benefits (functional, socio-psychological, hedonic and monetary benefits) are directly related to the 4 variables identified in the engagement (user participation, trust, affective commitment and loyalty), being able to contrast so if the benefits perceived by users in these social networks caused an increase in the 4 variables of engagement. The results specify a positive link of the socio-psychological and hedonic benefits perceived by the user with a greater engagement, however, there is more discrepancy in the functional benefits and, above all, to highlight the scarce transcendence of the monetary benefit to achieve a greater commitment with the users.