Professor Ooi wins two more awards for Top Downloaded Article.

UCSI University’s Professor Ooi Keng Boon has won two awards for the Top Downloaded Article 2018 from Elsevier in the journal Telematics & Informatics. Both articles bring valuable contributions to the field of Business and Information Science in specific ways.  

The first article, entitled The interactive mobile social media advertising: An imminent approach to advertise tourism products and services? provides guidance for managers in improving the use of mobile social media advertising in delivering tourism-related advertisements through the social media interfaces.

The applicability of mobile social media advertising in tourism is still a new research avenue among academicians. This study contributes to the scarce literature on tourism and marketing from the perspective of a developing economy by shedding light on the mobile social media advertising user’s behaviour.

Importantly, the study can also be extended as a research topic for undergraduate and postgraduate level. Through ascertaining the factors that may encourage consumers to adopt mobile social media advertising, new formulation of marketing strategies can be adopted by travel agencies, hotels, airline organisations, government agencies, mobile developers and other tourism related organisations.

This article was co-authored with Dr Lee Voon Hsien, Dr Garry Wei Han Tan, Hew Jun Jie (Universiti Tunku Abdul Rahman) and Dr Wong Lai Wan (Xiamen University Malaysia).

According to Prof Ooi, the study can boost the tourism sector in Malaysia with new jobs creation and also infrastructure development.

When asked about his motivation in writing the article, Prof Ooi said, “Traditional marketing advertising has often been confined to conventional methods such as radio, newspaper, television, etc.  Given that mobile devices have become a vital part of consumers' daily activities, advertising has shifted to mobile social media.

“While using mobile social media advertising is effective, many tourism organisations are skeptical on the acceptance level and whether consumers would accept this new form of advertising. Based on this gap, the study addresses the acceptance of consumers,” he added.

The second article entitled Gender and age: Do they really moderate mobile tourism shopping behavior? represents the few papers that examine a multidisciplinary theoretical model on the adoption of tourism related products among mobile consumers.

In addition, the study also offers practical implications which are essential to increase the tourist's arrival to Malaysia. Indirectly this would also lead to the increase of the country's income and employment opportunities in tourism related jobs.

As many Malaysians still regard purchasing tourism products using mobile devices as a new concept, this understanding will enable organisations to create successful travel websites which will induce the usage intention.

With deeper understanding on the behaviour of mobile consumers and the moderating effects of gender and age, organisations can further enhance their mobile marketing strategies.

As this research area is currently understudied and neglected among academicians, the theoretical framework can be replicated or extended by academicians and students as a potential research topic.

This article was co-authored with Dr Gary Wei Han Tan (Universiti Tunku Abdul Rahman).

“Both awards would be impossible without the strong support and the appropriate strategic direction given by the UCSI’s management team. I would like to thank the university for its strong encouragement in relation to our research activities, “said Prof Ooi.

“Publishing a research paper is an important activity among the academic community. As writing a manuscript requires a great deal of time and dedication, time management is very important. Specifically, you need to be disciplined and committed to every research project,” he continued.

“These publications help the university to be competitive in the QS and the World University Rankings. They also serve as an inspiration for other young academicians in the faculty to continue to strive for success. 

“Both papers address the behaviour of consumers in the tourism industry which is constantly shifting. Additionally, both papers have theoretical, managerial, methodological and social implications which can be useful for airline organisations, mobile developers, travel agencies and other tourism related organisations in planning their mobile marketing strategies,” Prof Ooi concluded. 

Telematics and Informatics is currently indexed with Clarivate Analytics under the Social Science Citation Index (SSCI), with an Impact Factor of IF = 3.789 as per JCR-2017 (Q1 Ranked Journal under Information Science & Library Science).