tiểu luận the influence of tiktok on the touristdestination choice of young foreigntourists in da nang

These videos stimulate their desire, making them ready to visitdestinations Du et al., 2020.Previous studies have been conducted to discuss the impact of TikTok ondestination development

UNIVERSITY OF ECONOMICS – THE UNIVERSITY OF DANANG

INTERNATIONAL BUSINESS

-RESEARCH PROPOSAL

THE INFLUENCE OF TIKTOK ON THE TOURIST DESTINATION CHOICE OF YOUNG FOREIGN

TOURISTS IN DA NANG

Course: Research Mothodology

Students: Nguyen Quynh Quyen

Instructor: PhD Bui Huynh Nguyen

DA NANG - June, 2023

1

LIST OF TABLE 2

LIST OF FIGURE 2

I BACKGROUND 3

II RESEARCH OBJECTIVES AND RESEARCH QUESTIONS 5

1 Research objectives: 5

2 Research questions: 5

III LITERATURE REVIEW 5

1 TikTok on tourism 5

2 Promoting destinations with TikTok 6

3 Tourist destination choice and its driving factors 6

IV RESEARCH METHOD 7

1 Research design 7

2 Data Collection 9

3 Data analysis 9

V TIMESALE AND RESOURCES 10

1 Timescale 10

2 Resources 11

REFERENCES: 12

LIST OF TABLE Table VI.1: Timescale 10

LIST OF FIGURE Figure V.1: The research process 8

I BACKGROUND

Tourism has become one of the important factors in promoting the economic growth of a country This has also been mentioned by Shang et al (2021) that tourism

is a sector with great potential for development and enhancement to contribute to growth and development of the economy As a young and dynamic city, Da Nang is blending into the common integration trend of both the country and the world With smooth and sandy beaches running across the coast, Da Nang beach was voted by Forbes (U.S.) to be one of the most beautiful and affordable cities for foreigners in

2019 Da Nang truly has one of the world's ideal ecological advantages and potentials for a world-class tourist destination With these advantages, tourism is becoming an important economic sector of Da Nang

Along with the increasing competition in the tourism industry, social media has become one of the marketing strategies that receives much attention and is also an important source to collect tourism information (Tobias-Mamina et al., 2020) The role

of social media in tourism decision-making has been explored in tourism research, including studies on the impact of electronic word-of-mouth (Chen et al., 2015) and user-generated content (UGC) (Oliveira & Casais, 2019) and the influence of social media on hotel bookings (Varkaris & Neuhofer, 2017) Compared to other social media platforms, tourism inspired by TikTok is currently a hot topic as TikTok is expanding widely At the end of 2019 and the beginning of 2020, with the outbreak of the Covid19 pandemic and the subsequent lockdown order, it seems that social media is one of the only ways for people to feel connected to friends and family (Pachucki et al., 2022) Then, people, especially young people, flocked to new social media platforms like TikTok (Unni & Weinstein, 2021) TikTok, a short video app, immediately became a "top stream" during the pandemic According to TikTok user statistics from Brian (2022), it had a 1157.76% increase in its user growth rate between Jan 2018 and July 2020 Since its launch in September 2016, TikTok has quickly become the most popular short video platform

A meeting organized by Byte Dance revealed that the most liked short videos on TikTok are about tourism 68% of users are following travel influencers, 80% of users

Research Proposal_Nguyen Quynh Quyen

even have no travel plans but still like to watch travel content and like to collect those contents 90% of users believe that collecting and watching travel content will have great reference value (Byte Dance meeting, 2021) These data show us a relatively positive result about people's intention to travel and show that topics related to tourism are being discussed fervently on TikTok through watching, creating and sharing videos about short trips These videos stimulate their desire, making them ready to visit destinations (Du et al., 2020)

Previous studies have been conducted to discuss the impact of TikTok on destination development (Wengel et al., 2022), the impact of travel vloggers on short video sharing (Zhao et al., 2022), the impact of short videos on customer attitudes towards destination brands (Cao et al., 2021), and the impact of food vlogs on destination image (Li et al., 2020) Most of these studies focus on the impact

of short video content on destinations and tourists; only a few discuss TikTok in relation to destinations or user behavior (Wang et al., 2022) Especially in Vietnam, there are only a few studies on factors influencing tourists' destination choices, such

as Travel vlog (K, Tran et al., 2022) or EWOM (T, L, Tran et al., 2023; S, D, Hoang et al., 2022), but no study has focused on a specific platform like TikTok Before TikTok appeared, other popular apps like Instagram and YouTube had short video services worldwide However, TikTok has had an unprecedented impact on the tourism industry, demonstrating the need to consider the platform's unique characteristics This has prompted me to experiment with using TikTok by tourists in the decision-making process and the factors influencing their choices In addition, TikTok's main users are young people like Millennials and GenZ, so their attitudes towards TikTok are worth studying Young people also often plan their family trips and may plan their own trips

in the coming years Therefore, my research focuses on the pre-travel stage (i.e., the consideration stage in the customer journey) to clarify the mechanism of influence between using TikTok and the destination choice behavior of young foreign tourists The results of this study contribute to both theory and practice They enrich the literature on the emerging topic of TikTok-related tourism The insights gained will be useful for destination managers and marketers in social media and digital marketing

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II RESEARCH OBJECTIVES AND RESEARCH QUESTIONS

1 Research objectives:

This study aims to explore which factors of TikTok can influence the destination choice of young foreign tourists in Da Nang Based on the findings, it provides recommendations for destination managers and marketers in social media and digital marketing to promote tourism in the region

2 Research questions:

Question 1: What aspects of TikTok can influence the destination choice of young foreign tourists in Da Nang?

Question 2: What marketing strategies should destination managers and marketers adopt to bring Da Nang closer to international tourists and promote tourism

in the region?

III LITERATURE REVIEW

1 TikTok on tourism

TikTok, known as Douyin (抖 音 ) in China, is a platform for creating, discovering, and sharing short videos launched in 2016, with over 600 million users as

of August 2020 and has become a global phenomenon social media app (Li, 2021) Pollack (2021) states that TikTok has become an interesting marketing channel for the tourism industry, as travel is one of the most popular topics on this platform For example, 10 destinations such as Dubai, Japan, Seoul, and Thailand are active under the hashtag #tiktoktravel In difficult times like the present, TikTok offers an opportunity to create a platform and provide suggestions for future trips for young travelers However, until now, very few brands have used TikTok as a marketing platform This is an advantage for newcomers, as this platform is not yet flooded with marketing content and therefore is an unexplored terrain According to research by Snow (2021), TikTok could be a new travel agent, and tourists can receive a lot of useful advice from TikTokers' travel posts

2 Promoting destinations with TikTok

According to Du et al (2020), TikTok now plays a significant role in shaping destination images, changing tourist behavior, and influencing tourist perceptions Opinions and suggestions gathered through social media, especially video reviews of travel experiences, are becoming increasingly important in the decision-making process for holiday destinations (Wengel et al., 2022) Moreover, TikTok also has a unique recommendation algorithm that not only helps videos spread quickly (Du

et al., 2020) but also allows them to expand into new topics they may be interested in (Zhang & Liu, 2021) This has made TikTok the second most downloaded Android app worldwide (Rimadias et al., 2021) and one of the reliable social media reference sources for finding travel destinations Furthermore, according to Simpleview (2021), the average interaction rate of TikTok is 29%, much higher than Facebook and Instagram with an average interaction rate of 3%-5% Therefore, TikTok has great potential to be considered a destination marketing tool in the future

3 Tourist destination choice and its driving factors

According to Zhang et al (2022), brand trust can be extended to social media brand trust The authors argued that trust in a brand on social media can influence people's purchasing intentions for both material and non-material products When a trusted relationship between a brand on social media and its users is established, it can influence people's actions and decisions, such as destination choices Similarly, when people trust TikTok, it may influence their "purchasing intentions," which translates to travel intentions and destination choices

Pop et al (2021) suggest that social media influencers can influence consumer desires and perceptions of travel destinations When people trust a social media influencer, their opinions are easily influenced, affecting their intentions and decisions

In Pop et al.'s (2021) study, once followers trust 13 influencers, they accept their proposals and advertised products without hesitation, and trust has a positive relationship with purchase intentions

In Chenchen et al.'s (2020) study, different marketing methods can affect tourists' image perceptions and subsequently affect their travel decisions, and

interactive marketing methods are the most influential, which can be short videos and live streaming The authors also found that different types of videos have different levels of impact on tourists' travel intentions The five popular video types in order of influence on tourists' travel intentions are City Architecture, Local Specialties, Natural Scenery, Experiences, and History

Moreover, the intention to travel is also influenced by tourists' risk perception and their sense of safety, as risk factors can make them apprehensive about what might happen to them during the trip (Wachyuni & Kusumaningrum (2020); Reisinger & Mavondo (2005)) Once tourists feel that their safety will be "at risk" when traveling, they develop negative perceptions of the tourist destination Risk perception can be considered an intermediary variable between other variables and the tourist destination choice Information from various types of videos or influencers on TikTok can help tourists perceive the risks and subsequently influence their destination decision However, a prerequisite is that people have trust in TikTok Only when they trust TikTok will they believe the information on TikTok Therefore, trust in TikTok is also related to risk perception

Based on the above, the following four variables have been selected as important factors related to the choice of tourist destination because they influence the decision: Trust in TikTok, Travel influencers on TikTok, Types of videos on TikTok, and Risk perception

IV RESEARCH METHOD

1 Research design

The research process was conducted in three stages:

Stage 1: Research problems investigation

I synthesized previous research and literature from scientific journals, domestic and international research works related to research topics to identify research gaps, construct a proposed research model, form hypotheses, and determine scales

Stage 2: Pilot study

After constructing the measurement scales based on the literature, I will put the observed variables into a draft questionnaire in the form of a 5-point Likert scale ranging from 1 (completely disagree) to 5 (completely agree) The questionnaire will then be sent to 20 acquaintances for evaluation and feedback to ensure that there will

be no misunderstandings about the language and content of each question After receiving feedback and suggestions, the research team will revise and develop the official questionnaire

Stage 3: Quantitative research

Quantitative research will be conducted on young foreign tourists through a survey using a questionnaire The research hypothesis is tested by using the SPSS 23.0 and SmartPLS 3.2.9 software Based on the results, the research team will propose recommendations

Figure IV.1: The research process

2 Data Collection

Sampling method

Non-probability sampling would be the best option for the needs of the report Convenience sampling and purposive sampling are the two sampling techniques used The questionnaire was provided in English, conducted both online and in-person For the online method, I will upload the survey form as a Google Form on travel forums and groups to collect responses from foreign tourists in Da Nang For the offline method, I will distribute the survey to young foreign tourists in popular tourist areas in Da Nang city, such as coastal areas, hotels and restaurants serving foreign tourists, tourist attractions and entertainment venues, as well as shopping centers

Sample size

According to the Da Nang City Tourism Department, in the first quarter of

2023, the estimated number of international tourists visiting Da Nang is 391,600 Therefore, the population for this study is 391,600

According to Yamane (1967), the formula for calculating the sample size based

on the population size is:

n=N/1(+Ne )2

n = sample size

N = population

e = margin of error (±5%)

Therefore, with a margin of error of 5% and a confidence level of 95%, the sample size for this study is 400

3 Data analysis

To validate the research model, I will first conduct descriptive statistics to determine the proportion of demographic characteristics of the respondents, including factors such as gender, nationality, age, education level, and average monthly income,

among others This will help me collect more fair results, allowing the researchers to have a general description of the sample characteristics

Then, Exploratory Factor Analysis (EFA) will be performed using SPSS 23.0 software to study the major variables that affect tourists' destination choices (each major variable will include similar minor variables) Cronbach's alpha will be used to test the reliability of the observed variables of the mother factor

Moreover, the Partial Least Squares Structural Equation Modeling (PLS-SEM) with the bootstrapping technique will be chosen to estimate the relationship between the variables from the SmartPLS 3.2.9 software

V TIMESCALE AND RESOURCES

1 Timescale

The implementation phase will be completed in 25 weeks, the first two of which will be devoted to zoning and defining the content and subjects

The following table depicts how time will be distributed over the next 23 weeks

Develop a measurement scale and questionnaire 3 weeks

Complete the research report (Research findings +

Discussion + Limitations of the study and future research) 4 weeks

Table V.1: Timescale

2 Resources

Finance

The estimated cost to complete this project is 500,000 VND It includes the following expenses: