The role of social media in the empowerment of Muslim women in their holiday decision-making in the UK
Muslim consumer segment has become the Fourth ‘Billion’ consumer segment after three biggest consumer groups in China, India, and women overall. Muslim consumer segment is increasing faster than the other consumer segments. Similarly, Muslim tourists are growing rapidly all around the world. The growing number of Muslim consumers worldwide makes Muslim consumers on of the most interesting topics in the tourism studies. Tourism phenomenon is significantly associated with socio-cultural extents of the society. However, within Muslim consumer segment mostly studies are done on Men; whereas Muslim women are equally playing an important role in the family decision-making, particularly in holiday decision-making. By understanding the needs of the Muslim women tourists, tourism marketers can effectively and efficiently interact with Muslim women tourists, respond to their questions, and communicate the right message. Muslim women have been found as a supressed and subdued segment in the UK. The internet, particularly social media is uplifting the role of supressed, isolated, anxious and lonely people in the society. Social media is the most influential platform for interacting, networking, and for decision-making. There are many studies which have found Facebook as the most popular tool in the UK, which has empowered many isolated, anxious, lonely, and socially supressed segments. This study uses Facebook as a tool to investigate the role of Muslim women in their holiday decision -making in the UK. The researcher uses quantitative methodology in this research to get to Muslim women respondents. Researcher uses questionnaire survey to collect information from Muslim women. Moreover, researcher uses snow bowling and convenience sampling approach. Questionnaire were mainly distributed online. Some responses were collected by giving out questionnaires offline. Collected information is analysed with the use of SPSS and AMOS. Researcher uses ad-hoc analyses and mediation analyses. This study finds that Mature adult Muslim women are the most empowered consumer segment with Muslim women. They self-disclose their holiday related information with their ties on Facebook. Moreover, mature adult Muslim women have higher level of autonomy than young adult and ageing adult Muslim women. Similar, mature adult Muslim women reciprocate more on Facebook than young adult and ageing adult Muslim women. Finally, the fascinating result of this research is the empowerment of Muslim women is mainly from the weaker ties on Facebook. Future research can replicate this research to explore the empowerment of Muslim women living in other parts of the world. Future studies can also explore the influence of religion in the empowerment of Muslim women.
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