From post to table: The social media marketing of food tourism

Abstract

The relation between food tourism and social media (SM) is crucial to successfully promote visitors' experiences that are connected to the territory. However, few previous research has analysed SM's role as a marketing strategy for local foods and their brands' symbolic meanings in tourism management and marketing. This paper aims to study the brand associated meanings of cheese and identify the SM marketing strategies used by the brands. Based on a content and semiotic analysis, this paper analyses 2229 Instagram posts of ten Spanish quality cheeses. Results show the identification of six categories (product, natural heritage, people, cultural heritage, events, and a miscellaneous category) and twenty-four mutually exclusive sub-categories that reveal the symbolic values that cheese communicates as part of the SM marketing strategies of the Spanish quality cheeses, which are predominantly social commerce and social content oriented. While virtual cheese narratives are predominantly focused on cheese as a product (social commerce), the cultural and natural heritages of cheese (social content) are also used for marketing purposes from an industry perspective. This novelty research contributes to the understanding of cheese-based tourism from a SM perspective