Social Media Marketing in Agritourism in a Pandemic World: Essential Ethical Considerations

Abstract

A global pandemic, such as Covid-19, can cause multifaceted crises, yet can also be viewed as an opportunity for agritourism enterprises to accelerate the adoption of digital technology, which is systematically reflected in increased internet marketing on social media networks. In the context of burgeoning investment in digital marketing by such enterprises, discussion surrounds the ineffectiveness of such strategies for generating an expected return on investment. This inefficiency is premised, albeit rudimentarily, on the poor adherence of some agritourism enterprises to the ethical values essential for creating and disseminating an effective social media marketing strategy. We encounter Pyrrhonism from several commentators that a marketing strategy conceived and disseminated in such a manner can yield positive returns. This skepticism has led us to develop a comprehensive narrative about how a lack of ethics in formulating any marketing message is both illusory and dangerous in the context of an audience’s receptivity. Here, we provide a vital backdrop for the chapter’s discussion by establishing ethical values that subsume the embodiment and dissemination of an efficacious social media strategy; derive critical forms of reflexive thinking regarding the causes behind the insufficient adherence of the ethical values in the formulation and dissemination of a social media strategy; and demonstrate how this deficiency is an ineliminable feature of an audience’s consumption of messages and its behaviour after that. This discussion was developed qualitatively based on the review of relevant qualitative and quantitative secondary data from recent empirical studies. Based on this review, it is concluded that even though digital marketing is chiefly dialectical in several agritourism enterprises today, its current form and dissemination seem unable to result in the enterprises’ endogenous vision of more returns. In light of this conclusion, it is proposed that there is a need for agritourism enterprises to adopt a desirable and obligatory approach that is explicitly structured to consider ethical aspects in the formulation and dissemination of a social media strategy.