Lebanon's area is ranked 170th in the world (CIA, 2014). It's smaller than how big is Connecticut, one of the smallest states in in America. Moreover, Lebanon is one of the few democratic countries in the Middle East region. Regarding its economy, Lebanon is just a free market economy and features a very long tradition of laissez-faire economics.smm panel Along with its coastal location on the Eastern Mediterranean coast, Lebanon is considered as the central 'window' of the Middle East to Europe, North Africa, and the rest of the world. As a result of this, its economy has experienced some very prosperous times and was even once called the 'Paris' of the Middle East prior to the nation's 15 year-long bloody civil war which ended in 1990.
Also, although Lebanon is tiny, it can also be one of the very most diverse nations in the world. Christians, Muslims, Druze, and other minority sects are spread all around the small nation and even Lebanon's political system is based on sectarian power sharing.However, this diversity had played a pivotal role in the nation's problems. This diversity was an essential condition of the country's sectarian civil war and currently plays an essential role in its political paralysis, although other factors (mainly foreign) are the culprit as well. There's currently no acting President and the country's rival political parties keep bickering and preventing as opposed to facilitating the country's development.Furthermore, Lebanon's proximity to Israel has managed to get a foreign policy/proxy battleground for foreign nations, each using Lebanon for its own selfish ends.
The sad political realities of the country have significantly hurt the country's economy. Also, since Lebanon is just a service-based economy, this specific sector has brought the largest hit.Tourism plays an important role in the nation's economy. In line with the Lebanese Ministry of Economy & Trade (MOET), "Tourism has long been one of Lebanon's leading economic sectors" (Economic Research Unit, 2010).Furthermore, The World Travel & Tourism Council estimated that the travel & tourism sector in Lebanon contributed over $4 billion dollars in 2013 (World Travel & Tourism Council, 2014).The travel & tourism sector constructed about 10% of the economy in 2012 but that share dropped to 9% in 2013 (ibid, p. 14). That is because of the political situation in the country in addition to various other factors. Moreover, the number of tourist arrivals in the country kept decreasing from 2011 to 2013.
Considering that the tourism industry has been somewhat floundering in recent years, the area for error becomes tiny for businesses in this industry. The political & economic situations are squeezing tourist-related (TR) businesses in Lebanon. Which means that these businesses are forced to complete more to replace with increasing losses (or decreasing profits) and with fewer resources. There's no telling when the political & economic situation in Lebanon will improve especially since the civil war in neighboring Syria shows no signs of abating.There are many ways that Lebanese TR businesses can adapt during these times such as for instance implementing downsizing policies and cutting back on marketing & advertising budgets. When economic recessions and tough times affect businesses, the very first things to have eliminated usually are marketing budgets. But especially since TR businesses should do more marketing to replace with lost businesses, this might not be a great idea.One solution to this problem would be to make the most of Social Media Marketing strategies simply because they cost little to no resources, great for the present economic situation in Lebanon. Social media marketing marketing allows TR businesses to overcome obstacles of limited budgets and decreased business.
During recent years, the positive effectation of social networking on business has been extremely high (Kaplan et al., 2010; Stelzner, 2010; Treem & Leonardi, 2012, p. 143; Baker & Green, 2014).Moreover, Facebook and Twitter fans of a particular brand are much more prone to recommend and buy from these brands than non-fans (Cruz & Mendelsohn, 2011). But, we don't need to ensure of social media's effect on business through research studies. For social networking users, which include over 30% of the planet, this fact is known. More and more businesses are inserting Social Media marketing tools into their marketing strategies and, in some cases, have even become an integral part of these overall business strategy.
Naturally, one would expect that Lebanese businesses would quickly adopt Social Media Marketing as an integral role inside their overall marketing strategies but this is not the case. As it pertains to the Middle East and especially Lebanon, the region is far behind the West in social networking usage. Not only that, as it pertains to businesses mixed up in tourism industry, there is much room for growth. Little investment in technology is keeping tourist businesses far from maximizing marketing opportunities written by social media.The Lebanese tourism industry is not benefiting from social networking marketing tactics even although advantages of accomplishing so are apparent. This presents a good problem especially since the economy is going through a very rough time.Moreover, Lebanese TR businesses and businesses in Lebanon in general aren't adopting social networking tools as they should. This presents an enormous problem in the waste of resources in addition to significant missed opportunities as a larger market can be reached via social networking enabling businesses that adopt social networking marketing tools gain a better potential for success and prosperity.
The fruits and benefits of social networking marketing tools will take significant time ahead about in Lebanon if we are ignorant of the factors that have resulted in the prevention of widespread social networking marketing adoption.Also, provided that no study switches into the issue of effectively implementing a cultural media marketing campaign in the Lebanese context, many TR businesses might be lost even if they opt to adopt social networking marketing tools.Additionally, even though there were numerous studies in the West about effectively implementing social networking marketing campaigns, the results of those studies may or might not apply to the Lebanese context. Therefore, it can also be the purpose of this study to discover those factors related to effectively implementing social networking marketing among Lebanese TR businesses.At the end, there is undoubtedly that social networking marketing plays an incredibly important role in the marketing campaigns and even yet in the entire success of tourism-related businesses.
Lebanese Tourist-Related (TR) businesses fall far behind the developed world in investing and using SMM. Since there are many benefits of SMM, exactly why is this so? Also, to catch around the rest of the world, what's the very best method for Lebanese TR businesses to deploy an SMM campaign? So, it absolutely was the study's purpose to get reasons linked to such low investment & usage of SMM by Lebanese TR businesses and to simply help guide these businesses in effectively using SMM.The purpose of this study is twofold. This study aims to discover exactly what those factors are that are avoiding the widespread adoption of social networking marketing tools among Lebanese TR businesses. The philosophy used is interpretivism, for an inductive way of go from specific to general research, the strategy is ethnographic, and the methodology is qualitative. In-depth interviews are used in combination with ten participants from ten different companies. Five companies had high social networking 'visibility' and another five didn't. So, the participants' answers provided very useful information and solutions for the study problem.
The outcomes unearthed that among the most relevant factors of little SMM investment & use by Lebanese TR businesses are that numerous don't see benefits to using SMM and so don't support it.The results also provided useful info on factors for effectively implementing SMM by Lebanese TR businesses such as the acceptance of SMM by ownership/decision-makers and the significance of these folks in seeing the benefits of SMM. Also, issues with implementing SMM include negative customer comments and inter-departmental power struggles.Recommendations include communicating the benefits of SMM to Lebanese TR businesses that will be of such high importance to encourage them to use SMM. There should also be an SMM plan with a steady schedule outlining the times to add content to social networking sites in addition to comprehensive monitoring of SM user comments about the business.At the end, it's the researcher's hope that the research helped shed light on important aspects of SMM and its relation to Lebanese TR businesses. It can also be hoped that the recommendations be studied under consideration by Lebanese TR businesses.