East Asian tourists’ exposure to social media advertising, attitude, and their purchasing behavior with hotels in Bangkok

Abstract

The ultimate goal of this research was to study the correlations between East Asian tourists' exposure to social media advertisements by hotels in Bangkok, their attitude toward the advertisements, and their purchasing behavior. The primary reason for conducting this study is the COVID-19 pandemic's effect on the hospitality industry within Bangkok and the expectation of an increase in the tourist population visiting Bangkok at the end of 2022 and the beginning of 2023. East Asian tourists were targeted for this study because they have historically been the demographic that had most visited Thailand. Two hundred respondents were requested to complete the online questionnaire, which was disseminated via flyers at high-end hotel counters in Bangkok with a QR code leading to the questionnaire. The questionnaire was split into five segments, with the KAP model serving as the study's theoretical framework: screening questions, demographics, exposure to advertisements on social media, attitudes toward these advertisements, and purchasing behavior. The respondents were requested to fill out a questionnaire that contained questions regarding the factors that impacted their purchase decisions preceding the visit. The findings of this study reveal that there is a substantial positive correlation between exposure to social media advertisements of Bangkok hotels and East Asian tourists' attitudes toward the advertisements in addition to the relationships between the respondents' purchasing behavior and their attitudes toward the advertisements. With the exception of WeChat, it has also been determined that all of the platforms examined in this research are almost comparable in terms of exposure.