engleski

Analyzing the Effects of Online and Offline Communication in the Hotel and Restaurant Industry: The PLS Approach

Perception of communication consistency on online and offline channels is a hot topic in the hospitality industry (Šerić, 2017). Literature suggests that communication consistency is a basic principle of the integrated marketing communications (IMC) approach (Torp, 2009), which seeks to create a strong brand in the consumers’ minds through integration and synergies of different marketing communication tools and channels (Keller, 2009). In particular, a number of researchers provided empirical evidence for the existence of synergies between online and offline media channels (e.g. Chang & Thorson, 2004 ; Havlena, Cardarelli, & De Montigny, 2007 ; Naik & Peteres, 2009). In addition, the most recent studies stressed the importance of integrating consumers in the marketing communication paradigm and considering consumer perception of brand communication (e.g. Batra & Keller, 2016 ; Bruhn & Schnebelen, 2017 ; Melewar, Foroudi, Gupta, Kitchen, & Foroudi, 2017). This is because nowadays consumers, instead of accepting the message that companies try to “push” them, rather “pull” the information according to their interests and preferences (Kitchen & Schultz, 2009), thus actively participating in the communication integration process (Finne & Grönroos, 2017). For this reason, this work adopts the consumer perspective and examines the perception of communication consistency from the consumer point of view.

online communication, offline communication, hotel, restaurant, PLS

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