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1. Introduction
Social media, especially shared over social networks, has become increasingly important in peoples’ lives, and therefore also for the business world. Companies in more and more sectors try to connect via social media channels with their customers, be it for service or product marketing purposes. Also, the airline industry increasingly uses social media, and most airlines are active in networks like Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn. Leung et al. (2013) as well as Zeng and Gerritsen (2014) provide a literature review on social media for tourism, concluding that research on social media in tourism is still in its infancy, while Tham et al. (2013) discuss the effect of electronic word-of-mouth on destination image and choice, Munar and Jacobsen (2014) motivations for sharing experiences through social media, and Hudson and Thal (2013) describe the overall impact. Kim and Tussyadiah (2013) focus on the social support through the networks and the relationship to tourism experience moderated by tourists’ self-presentation strategies.
In an industry where the competition increased significantly with the market entry of low cost carriers, airlines are consistently looking for new services to differentiate and attract customers. Besides customer service applications and fan pages, an additional service innovation relying on social networking was introduced by some airlines, as well as several independent providers during the last years: being social in the air, or most often referred to as social seating (Neuhofer, 2016; Daum and Wittmer 2016). Such services try to facilitate that consumers connect, meet and can have an enhanced in-flight experience through choosing a neighbor for an upcoming flight, as well as possible additional positive outcomes like business opportunities beyond the flight itself. Neuhofer (2016) lists this as a form of customer-to-customer co-creation through social media. For this purpose, airlines or focused online start-ups either make use of already existing customer profiles in other social networks or allow users to create new ones.
The aim of this study is to investigate these applications, called social seating tools throughout the paper, with respect to their acceptance by customers, and factors influencing this acceptance. While this innovation was introduced a few years ago, the uptake turned out to be quite limited, and several initiatives have been discontinued. This makes social seating an interesting example of a...