Customer Satisfaction on Social Media Marketing in Malaysian Hospitality Industry

Introduction

Customer satisfaction is described as a common assessment based on total on the overall purchase and depletion experience with the products and services over the years (Khristianto, Kertahadi, and Suyadi, 2012). It is hence a decisive upshot as an unlawful knowledge on how to make customers further gratified because customer satisfaction also derives laterally with it which means it establishes the expectation of the customers with marketing on how the products and services are being expedited by the companies (Heizer and Render, 2011). In today’s business world, customer satisfaction’s feedback are very noteworthy (Hanif, Hafeez, and Riaz, 2010). This is also supported by many researchers that customer satisfaction is widely used these days as the customers’ feedback are remarkable to be referred as references (Hao, Yu, Law et al., 2015; McColl-Kennedy, 2015). According to Wu (2011), an idiosyncratic kind of customer attitude has fallen under the category of customer satisfaction where in terms of the level of customer satisfaction, the customers are inclined to demonstrate innumerable kinds of behaviours. The satisfaction level of the customers would be influenced through the service quality awareness where this is also supported and concluded by (Kashif, Altaf, and Ayub et al., 2014).

Technology has proven a swift expansion with the primer of small communication devices where these devices are used for retrieving social networks anytime at anywhere in which the gadgets include laptops, iPads, iPods, mobile phones and pocket computers (Tariq, Mehboob, and Khan et al., 2012). Social media is changing the social patterns and culture where it is becoming part of our society these days (Al-Sharqi, Hashim, and Kutbi, 2015). Therefore, this study will further enhance the understanding of the use of social media marketing in today’s businesses. In the globalization world, the knowledge and contents sharing is a social aspiration to everyone now (Wolf, Wenskovitch, and Anton, 2016). According to Lowisz (2014). Social media has also wedged the world events of today where the instant news received on daily basis through this channel is as high as 50% where everyone will be able to know the news on the spot.

In addition, the facilitation of two-way communication between a company and their stockholders is also one of the benefits of social media to act as a communiqué platform (Chuck, 2019). Social media can be a marketing tool in which it entails endless revising as social media permits users to store and remark information of different form or publishing as well as a key for attaining the business-end goals (Daj, 2013). Social media has given in no-way finishing opportunity for communication; it is the people who serve as the influencers but no longer the technology (Gonzalez, 2010). Kaplan and Haenlein (2010) further explained that the description of the sum of all ways in which people make use of social media is through the user generated content and it is usually used to portray the innumerable forms of media content that are visibly accessible and shaped by end users.

Figure 1 shows the segment of social media users as a percentage of the total population in Malaysia from 2016-2019. According to the survey conducted by the Statista Research Department as of January 2019, about 78 percent of the Malaysian population were vigorous social media users (Statista Research Department, 2019). Since the hospitality industry is instantly growing and the social media is widely used by everyone, the market potential for the hospitality industry in Malaysia is significant through the influence of social media (Matikitia, Krugerb, and Saaymanc, 2016; Rosman and Stuhura, 2013). For these reasons, this study was designed to explore the level of satisfaction of the customers on social media marketing in the Malaysian hospitality industry. Conversely, at present, there is limited research on social media marketing in the Malaysian hospitality industry, rather these researches focus on the businesses sector, education sector, society and other diverse industries (Akram and Kumar, 2017). The hypothesis of this study is that there exist suitable variables to passage the term of social media marketing. Moreover, guileless approach can be developed to accurately describe the perception of the customers towards social media marketing in the Malaysian hospitality industry. The aims of the research are to identify whether customer satisfaction on social media marketing in the Malaysian hospitality industry has a relationship with the variables of this study.

Figure 1.

Usage of Social Media in the Society (Statista Research Department, 2019)