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The purpose of this study is to understand what insights could be gathered from customer posts on social media that would benefit operations and supply chains. This research analyses social media posts to uncover the themes that could be related to new product development (NPD) and the design of ‘end-to-end’ supply chains. Consumer posts will be analysed from social media platforms of two well-known multinational food and beverage companies. Social media analytics can be used to gather knowledge and intelligence for organisations aiming to have consumer-centric supply chains.

Information Systems (IS) has emerged as a reference discipline in its own right (Baskerville & Myers, 2002). Given the ubiquitous nature of technology in every aspect of our social and work lives, the IS discipline has much to offer tourism researchers. Despite this, many tourism academics continue to publish their technology-related research in specific tourism and technology related books and journals. Therefore, we believe that there is an opportunity for tourism academics to submit their tourism and technology related research to IS journals. It is the responsibility of tourism scholars to promote tourism research, and publishing research in another discipline is a good opportunity to foster serious treatment of the tourism field, and the impact tourism has in today’s society. Based on a keyword search of “tourism” within key IS journals from 1988 to 2015, we found only 11 papers. In an analysis of diversity and inter-disciplinary discourse in IS journals (Bernroider, Pilkington, & Córdoba, 2013), tourism does not get mentioned. Therefore, we believe there is an opportunity for tourism and technology research to be submitted to IS journals. A key element to be key considered when publishing in IS journals is the role of theory. In IS research, theorising about the technological artefact must take priority (Orlikowski & Iacono, 2001), while the tourism element of the research becomes the context. Based on an analysis of technology papers in tourism journals we found that many of the topics researched could have been submitted to IS journals, for example: Evaluation of IS in a tourism organisation: e.g. Lin (2016); Users or user expectations: e.g. Huang, Backman, Backman, and Moore (2013); Database and tracking requirements: e.g. Zheng, Huang, and Li (2017); Decision support systems: e.g. Woeber and Gretzel (2000). In this conference presentation, we also identify potential areas suitable for tourism and IS academics to collaborate. We hope this initiative will help tourism to gain deserved attention from other disciplines, and gain respect for tourism as a research object of interdisciplinary research (Darbellay & Stock, 2012). By showcasing research outcomes to a broader audience, this can also help to emphasise the significance of tourism’s impact in today’s society.

The popularity of social media is increasing as more social media platforms are produced. Businesses have seen the potential for social media and have changed their business strategies to suit this change. Social media allows businesses to communicate and provide awareness to their customers about offerings. It also provides a good platform for individuals or customers to communicate to the business on how they are operating, their views on products or services. The research problem we address in this study is with this amount of freedom to share information through social media, we need an understanding of the considerations of how businesses maintain social capital and social trust. This paper presents a preliminary study which explores the effectiveness of how businesses maintain good social capital. This study uses primary data collected from interviews with businesses about their social media use with their customers. The preliminary results show that businesses do understand the importance of maintaining a high social capital within social media. This paper contributes to the social capital theory literature within the context of social media usage by organisations, and thus the results may also provide some practical guidance organisations.

There is an increasing interest within both organisational and social contexts in virtual worlds and virtual reality platforms. Virtual worlds are highly graphical systems in which avatars interact with each other, and almost every event and conversation is logged and recorded. This presents new challenges for qualitative researchers in information systems. This paper addresses the challenges of analyzing the huge amounts of qualitative data that can be obtained from virtual worlds (both images and text). It addresses how images might be used in qualitative studies of virtual worlds, and proposes a new way to analyze textual data using a qualitative software tool called Leximancer. This paper illustrates these methods using a study of a social movement in a virtual world.

In this paper we explore the difference in acceptance patterns of mobile services that are related to travelling in three countries: Finland, The Netherlands and New Zealand. The objective of this paper is to understand differences in the use of Mobile Travel Services in three countries that differ with regard to national travel patterns. This paper also contributes to the discussion of the relevance of the Technology Acceptance Model for mobile applications by focusing on the importance of context characteristics, such as the degree of mobility of the user, the social situation people are in, and their need for social interaction. Based on surveys in the three countries as executed in 2009, we use structural equation modelling to find differences in patterns. The paper concludes that context factors have an impact on the relation between the core concepts as used in TAM and DOI approach, and that t here is a clear need for closer research in the moderating effect of physical (e.g. mobile and fixed context) and social context, as well as the need for social interaction. Moreover it is clear that country specific characteristics play a role in the acceptance of mobile travel services. As we pointed out in many of our research projects before the acceptance and use of mobile services requires deep understanding from individual, context and technology related characteristics and their mutual interactions.

Virtual worlds provide new forms of collaboration and social interaction. The World of Warcraft (WoW) is one such virtual world. It is the most popular example of what is called a Massively Multiplayer Online Role Playing Game (MMORPG). In this paper, we analyze players’ outcomes with WoW using chaos theory. Our paper suggests that players are highly sensitive to initial conditions which are impacted by style of play and the social structure of groups.

Backpacker sociality is a networking sociality, which is created through intersecting movements between physical and virtual space (Castells, 2002). Interweaving with physical sociality, Chinese backpackers (CBs) are highly active on their virtual world. This study, focuses on connectedness of CBs and their daily social networks through Information Communication Technologies (ICTs). CBs with embedded Chinese values therefore tend to practice and perceive information services uniquely. This paper aims to explore the relationships among cultural values, information services perceptions and adoption, as well as how these service affect CBs perception of the value of technology. To achieve this aim, we investigate the use and acceptance of information technologies by Chinese outbound backpackers in Europe, by exploring their perceptions, practice and preferences of different types of ICT services in an intercultural context.

Virtual worlds are online three-dimensional worlds that are often constructed to look much like the real world. As more people begin to use these virtual worlds, virtual communities are emerging enabling various social activities and social interactions to be conducted online. Based on a literature review of social movements, virtual communities and virtual worlds, this paper suggests a framework to guide IS research into this new and exciting area.

Virtual worlds provide new forms of social interaction. They offer alternative spaces where social functions can be carried out in online three-dimensional virtual environments. In this paper we explore how collective action on a global scale is enabled by these virtual worlds. We used qualitative research to examine the organization of one social movement in World of Warcraft (WoW), the most widely used massively multiplayer online role playing game in the world. Using New Social Movement Theory, our paper suggests that there are a number of differences between real world and virtual world social movements, namely in their (a) locality, (b) issues, (c) periods of activity, (d) hierarchies, and (e) membership.