According to our research, we found few other articles collecting data from social media accounts about airline industry. Carnein et al. (2017), for example, collected written comments of airline customers on Facebook. Carnein et al. (2017) explored the customer service performance by analyzing the response punctuality and high response rates of the airline companies to customers posts on Facebook. The results showed that the level of service given by the airline companies is changing from one company to another. (Carnein et al., 2017)

Liau and Tan (2014) collected written comments of the airline customers on Twitter and grouped the main topics as “customer service, ticket promotions, flight cancellations or delays, and post-booking management”. Misopoulos et al. (2014) also collected written comments of the airline customers on twitter and grouped the main topics which are positive as “online and mobile check-in services, favorable prices, and flight experiences” whereas negative ones as “usability of company's web site, flight delays, and lost luggage”.

J. Davis (2016) asserted that there are four types of social media engagement each of which emphases different behaviors of the users to the content published by the brands. First type is called “acknowledgment engagement” includes simple reaction to the content by users such as pushing like or save button. In this type of easy engagement user expresses that s(he) noticed and appreciated the content and conveys very little public connection. Second type is called “association engagement” which includes interaction with the company's content such as making comment or follow. Association engagement is a higher quality engagement than simple reaction which users make more effort and publicly associate herself with the company. Third type is called “amplification engagement” implies that user spreads the company's content by sharing or reposting. Amplification engagement increases the company's social reach and expose its content to a new audience. The fourth type is called “action engagement” which goes beyond the content of the company and user visits the website of the company. The communication turns from social to action as a result of marketing efforts and gets close to the purchase. (J. Davis, 2016)

Action engagement can only be measured with additional marketing tools to which only the brands themselves have access to. Amplification engagement is commonly used on Facebook with its share content button. In YouTube users have little capacity to share the content of others because of the property rights. On Instagram also there is no share content button. Therefore, in our research we will not be able to use action and amplification engagement.

It is important for airline companies to understand the effectiveness of the content they will share on social media. Therefore, they measure what share of followers engaged with which content on social media. It is also important to determine the right day and right time to increase the engagement. Different social media platforms have different methods to calculate customer engagement rates. In general, they measure the engagement of a certain content by dividing total number of interactions by the total number of reach. (Menichini, 2015)

Facebook is the most flexible social platform, presents its users wide scope of options for interaction. Users can share, make comment or choose an emoji to express their feelings in short way. All of those interactions are taken into consideration and generic customer engagement of a time period is measured on Facebook by Mariani (2018) with the formula of x100.

Menichini (2015) dissertation about measuring customer engagement on social media can also be applied to Instagram. Since it is a less flexible social platform than Facebook, users are usually limited with like button and comments for engagement in public pages. Therefore, customer engagement formula of Instagram x100 is alike Facebook but more narrow.

We will also highlight the study of Xie (2017) which includes a method for measuring engagement special for YouTube, since we will use it in the following chapter. In general, number of followers is regarded as the most important index to measure a value on social media. In his study, he contradicted that perception and developed a measurement method to calculate an engagement index of YouTube channels. (Xie, 2017)

According to Xie (2017), there are three layers of engagement. First layer is the shallow engagement which is calculated by the quantitative variables of like count, dislike count, comment count and view count. Shallow Engagement Scorex1000. Second layer is medium engagement which is calculated by the frequency of specific words in the comments. He counts the conversations and his list of vocabulary such as awesome, cool etc. Third layer is called deep engagement which is calculated by the contributions of the subscribers such as donating money or writing comments longer than 250 words. (Xie, 2017)

2. Increasing Customer Engagement in Global Airline Companies

In this chapter we will make an overview about global airline industry and note the largest ten airlines by passengers, revenue, brand value, fleet size and countries served. We observe that Turkish Airlines is behind its many competitors except one category. Consequently, we will monitor the performance of airline companies on social media and see that Turkish Airlines is among the largest three airlines by the number of followers. Before making a more specific analysis, we will examine the top three airlines on social media and monitor their interaction numbers and customer engagement strategies. Then, we will analyze the way of customer engagement of Turkish Airlines by the posting time, content type and content theme.

2.1 Analysis of Global Airline Industry

The global airline industry is an indispensable and important component of the creation of the global economy with the service it provides to virtually every corner of the globe. The global airline industry is a major economic force with its own operations and its effect on related industries such as aircraft manufacture and travel. After 2003, abandoning the operations of Concorde, fleets of commercial airlines are heavily depended on American manufacturers namely Boeing and Airbus. (Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 2007)

Due to the strategic benefits beyond monetary ones, having a strong airline industry has been generating important attention by shareholders, government policy makers, media and many others. As a result, there always has been a unique effort to gain power in the global airline industry. Today, the global airline industry consists of more than 23,000 aircraft, providing service to over 43,000 airports. (CIA World Fact Book, 2018) In 2018, airlines have carried over 4,4 billion passengers, directly created 10,2 million jobs and flown 7,75 trillion kilometers (Air Transport Action Group, 2018). Everyday 120,000 flights take off and 12 million passengers are travelling by airplane (Air Transport Action Group, 2018).

In this subchapter, we will focus on largest airlines in the industry to explore their ways of customer engagement in our following subchapters. However, in airline industry, it is not possible to choose one company as the largest one because there are more than one company which is the largest in different category. Therefore, we will make a short industry analysis about the leader companies which will shed light on our comparisons in the following subchapter.

Table 2

Largest Airline Companies By Passengers Carried

The table above shows the ranks of the global airline companies in 2016 by the number of passengers carried. American Airlines is the largest airline company with 198,7 million passengers and the top four companies are from United States of America. American companies are far beyond leader in the industry and their closest rival Ryanair has less than a million passengers though it is a low-cost carrier. Turkish Airlines is barely finding a place at top ten by 9^th rank with 62,8 million passengers. Despite China has the second largest airline passengers in the world after United States, Chinese airline companies are far behind the American companies (Civil Aviation Statistics, World Bank).

Secondly, we will look at the largest airline companies by the revenue. Since evaluating the largest airlines with other financial numbers will make sense; profit, assets, market capitalization and the number of employees also provided with the below table.

Table 3

Largest Airline Companies by Revenue (2017- US$B)

According to the table above, American Airlines Group is again the largest airline in the world by the revenue of 43 billion dollars. The top three of the list are American companies each with a revenue over 40 billion dollars. Major European airlines are placed between fourth and the sixth rank as Lufthansa, Air France-KLM and International Airlines respectively. Chinese and Japanese airline companies are placed at the bottom of the top ten list. Emirates has also revenue 24,2 billion dollars and could enter the list by 7^th rank, however, since it is government owned company, not included in the list. Turkish Airlines is not among the largest ten airlines with 10,96 billion dollars revenue.

Thirdly, we will look at the largest companies by the fleet size. Fleet size is an important indicator for an airline company to show its capacity of potential operations. The company ranks are similar to the list of largest airline companies by passenger.

Table 4

Largest Airline Companies By Fleet Size (December 2017)

The table above shows the ranks of the global airline companies in 2017 by the fleet size. The American Airlines is the largest airline company with 950 air crafts and the top four companies are from United States of America. Chinese air companies are following the American companies far behind as the total fleet size of the two Chinese companies China Southern Airlines and China Eastern Airlines together is slightly bigger than American Airlines alone. Turkish Airlines is barely find a place at top ten with 329 air crafts.

Fourthly, we will look at the largest airline companies by countries served. Rankings in this list is very different than the others below. American companies are not at the top.

Table 5

Largest Airline Companies By Countries Served (January 2019)

The table above shows the ranks of the global airline companies in 2019 by the countries served. Turkish Airlines is flying to 121 countries and the largest airline company by the countries served. We see the major European and Gulf airline companies in the list. Unlike the other lists, only one company from United States, Delta Airlines could barely get in the top ten list by 9^th rank. Unlike the other lists, Chinese companies are not among the largest ten airlines in the world and one Russian airline company, Aeroflot flying to 52 countries is in the list by 10^th rank.

Finally, we will look at the largest airline companies in the world by brand value. Before the list, we would like to make the definition of brand value by the the internationally recognized standard on Brand Valuation - ISO 10668. It defines brand as a “marketing-related intangible asset that may include names, terms, and logos that are intended to identify goods and create distinctive images and associations in the minds of stakeholders, thereby creating economic benefits” (Brand Finance, 2018)

Table 6

Largest Airline Companies By Brand Value (US$M)

The table above shows the ranks of the global airline companies in 2018 by the brand value. American Airlines is the largest airline company with 9.094 billion brand value and the top three companies are from United States of America. American companies are far beyond leader in the industry and their closest rival Emirates has slightly more brand value than the half of the American Airlines. We see two Chinese and two European companies on the list. Turkish Airlines with 2.042 billion dollars are not among the largest top ten airline companies.

2.2 Comparison of Turkish Airlines and Other Global Airline Companies on Social media

In this subchapter of our thesis we will compare the social media activities of Turkish Airlines with the other global airline companies and pick a focus group to analyze the ways of customer engagement in the following subchapter. Therefore, we will add up all the airline companies in the chapter 2.1. in the list below. In other words, by revenue, brand value, number of passengers, fleet size or number of counties served, below companies are in top ten at least in one category. We scrutinized the largest ten companies from five categories, however, since some companies are largest in more than one category, there are 17 companies in the table.

From the table below we see that companies from the same or near countries have some similarities about the ways of engagement on social media. Those similarities which is significant to our analysis will explained deeper in this subchapter.

Table 7

Global Airline Companies on Social Media by Follower Numbers

In the previous subchapter, except one category, American Airlines ranked 1^st the largest airline company in the world and other American companies are following, though, companies from Gulf and Europe are far behind them. On the other hand, in the table above we see that airline companies from United States are not leader in terms of the number of followers on social media. In other words, despite of their large number of passengers and brand value, airlines from United States are not as successful as other companies to attract customer attention to their social media page.

Airline companies from United States have the largest number of passengers, brand value, revenue and fleet size, therefore, they were also supposed to be leader in social media with their advantages. Nevertheless, there is not any company from the United States at the top ten list by the number of followers on social media except Southwest Airlines. American Airlines, Delta Airlines and United Airlines are the leaders of the airline industry and place 1^st, 2^nd and 3^rd rank respectively in terms of revenue, brand value and fleet size but they are far behind from the top in terms of the number of followers and not even placed in the top ten list. United Airlines has the smallest Facebook community in our list after China Eastern Airlines.

Another significant point from the table is that, companies from Europe have better performance than the companies from United States. We see that they are more focused on Facebook and have high number of followers on Facebook whereas they are still weak on Instagram and YouTube. While companies from Europe are far behind of companies from United States in terms of revenue, number of passengers, brand value and fleet size, they are ahead of companies from United States in terms of the number of followers on social media. Dutch company KLM has the second largest Facebook community and Air France has the fifth. Including Ryanair, Lufthansa, British Airways, there are five companies from Europe in the top ten largest Facebook follower list.

The most unexpected point from the table is the high number of followers of companies from the Gulf countries. Emirates and Qatar Airways are attracted millions of users with their social media strategies and become popular even more than television celebrities. Emirates with a brand value of nearly half of the American Airlines, have attracted number of followers more than four times of the American Airlines. We see that companies from Gulf countries focus on social media and become the largest in terms of the number of followers.

Companies from the far east have a presence on social media however it is hard to say that their way to get attention from users is successful. Companies from China have some local accounts but none of them have big number of followers. Considering the high population and growing number of passengers, China Southern Airlines and China Eastern Airlines are supposed to have more followers. China Southern Airlines has 6^th ranked by the number of followers on Facebook which can be regarded as their strongest platform. However, on Instagram and YouTube; China Southern Airlines and China Eastern Airlines have the worst performance in the list. The censorship of Facebook, Instagram and YouTube in China can be an excuse for those airline companies, however, considering as a player in global airline industry, they should handle their disadvantage on social media to reach their global targets. Nippon Airlines from Japan also cannot find a place in top ten by the number of followers on social media.

The table above ranks companies by the number of followers of Facebook, Instagram and YouTube. As mentioned in the first chapter, the number of followers is regarded as the first indicator of the customer engagement on social media. In the context of the above table, Qatar Airways, KLM and Turkish Airlines are the largest companies on Facebook; Emirates, Qatar Airways and Turkish Airlines are the largest companies on Instagram and Emirates, Southwest Airlines and Turkish Airlines are the largest companies on YouTube. Therefore, in the following paragraphs we will look deeper in each social media and analyze engagements of the largest three airlines in each platform.

Facebook:

The first platform we scrutinized data is Facebook which is the earliest and largest social media platform with monthly 2,2 billion active users (Disparte 2018). Facebook as a flexible platform, provides companies wide scope of tools in terms of the post type. Companies have free limit to post either video, image, text or links to their pages.

Table 8

Analysis of Top Global Airline Companies on Facebook February 01-March 01, 2019

Qatar Airlines has the largest number of followers on Facebook with 13 million. In February, 2019; Qatar Airlines shared 23 posts and generated 76,983 interactions. In 2011, they opened their Facebook page with a big campaign to celebrate their 100th flight destinations and gave away 100 tickets to 100 destinations to attract users to their Facebook page. Each user invited five friends to attend the contest and attracted more than 200,000 active users to their page as a beginning. Furthermore, Qatar Airways have been posting high quality content on their page and viral commercial videos such as `No Borders, Only Horizons', which has been viewed by more than 100 million viewers. (Ho, 2011)

KLM has the second largest number of followers on Facebook with 12 million. In February 2019; KLM shared 12 posts and generated 78.324 interactions. They are pioneer airline company on Facebook which others follow them in many examples. For example, KLM is the first airline company started to give service through Facebook messenger. Passengers can send direct message to KLM on Facebook if they lost and forget something on board an aircraft and a staff member picks it up off the plane and bring it to them. KLM is one of the airline company heavily using artificial intelligence and machine learning and implement bots for speed. KLM is also sending their customers booking details and boarding passes, online checking information and give flight status reminders via Facebook messenger. (Sentence, 2018)

After KLM, Turkish Airlines ranked 3rd with 10 million followers on Facebook. In February, 2019; Turkish Airlines shared 20 posts and generated 75.160 interactions. With their mantra `we are globally yours' they made several successful campaigns to attract customers to visit their Facebook page. For example, “Hard to Say Easy to Fly” campaign which is a contest among users trying to pronounce some of the tricky destination names that the airline flies to such as Dnepropetrovsk, Guangzhou and Ljubljana. After `liking' the specially designed application, contestants were prompted to pronounce 14 city names using a webcam and win a trip to one of those cities. Only this contest promoted 1,5 million Facebook fans and a version of video showing peoples attempts garnered 22,000 views. (Eye For Travel, 2013)

The results of the monthly analyses of the three companies are showing similarities. Total interaction numbers are very close to each other. However, we see that KLM is posting less number of content than Qatar and Turkish Airlines, though KLM has the highest number of interaction. Another point is while Turkish Airlines have positive change compared with the previous month, other two companies have negative change.

Instagram:

The second platform we scrutinized data is Instagram which is the quarterly fastest growing social media and third largest social media platform with monthly 1 billion active users (Southern, 2018). Instagram as a less flexible platform, does not allow companies to post links or long texts. Initially, Instagram is not created for extended back and-and-forth conversations or debates but for images and short videos. Although, later with IGTV and live broadcast feature, it also enables users to share long videos.

Table 9

Analysis of Top Global Airline Companies on Instagram (February 01-March 01, 2019)

Emirates has the largest number of followers on Instagram with 4,2 million and far ahead the other airline companies with the mentioned number of followers. In February, 2019; Emirates shared 20 posts and generated 831.740 interactions. They invest in sponsorships in many fields to increase their visuality and use it on Instagram to attract users. For example targeting Europe, they sponsor football teams with big fan base from many countries such as Real Madrid, Paris Saint-Germain, AC Milan, Arsenal FC. Targeting United States, Australia and other countries, they sponsor Rugby World Cup, Formula 1 and Tennis Championships and Grand Slam events. In addition, they post the most famous singers, actors and celebrities on their Instagram page and announce cooperation with them and bridge the content with their service. (Zylka, 2018) Their content is attractive because they follow and include what is trendy and popular at the time and successfully insert their advertisements in it with high quality videos and photos. They also create buzz with sensational posts such as diamond studded Emirate's plane and create curiosity among fans whether it is real or photoshop (Campbell, 2018).

Qatar Airways has the second largest number of followers on Instagram with 2,5 million. In February, 2019; Qatar Airways shared 16 posts and generated 624,167 interactions. With their mantra “going places together” they made several successful campaigns to attract customers to visit their Instagram page. For example, “PPLoveInAir” (Passion Passport, 2019) and “destigram” (Gulf Times, 2014) contest which encourages customers to share photos from the new Qatar Airways destinations and tag the company and use their hashtag to viral their commercials. In addition, they sponsor 18^th Asian Games and FIFA World Cup and announce it through Instagram page to attract more users to follow their page. (Lemon, 2017)

Turkish Airlines has the third largest number of followers on Instagram with 1,4 million. In February, 2019; Turkish Airlines shared 14 posts and generated 789.695 interactions. Turkish Airlines sponsored Manchester United Football Club and announced with a contest named “Fans United” and awarded winners from 20 different countries to a trip to watch Manchester United Football match (Scibetti, 2013). Another creative Instagram engagement campaign is “TakeMeThere” which users are encouraged to take selfie in front of Turkish Airlines massive high definition advertisement, tag Turkish Airlines and write where and why want to fly. By this campaign, advertisements take more attention as people take selfie in front of them and create viral on Instagram. (Marcommnews, 2018)

YouTube:

The third platform we scrutinized data is YouTube which has monthly 1,8 billion active users and more popular than Facebook among millennials in United States (Kaye L., 2013). YouTube is a second most used search engine after Google and an interactive platform functional for interaction of customers and companies. Different from Facebook and Instagram, it deprives of image function, however, it provides companies to upload high definition and longer videos.

Table 10

Analysis of Top Global Airline Companies on YouTube February 01-March 01, 2019

Emirates is the largest airline on YouTube by the number of subscribers with 470 thousand. In February 2019; Emirates shared 4 videos and generated 4.116 interactions. Since 2006, they uploaded 638 video and generated 170 million views. They are the pioneer in content and posting creative and interesting videos and bridge them with an advertisement of their service. For example, interviews with celebrities such as football legend Pele attracts all funs even people totally uninterested in Emirates but in the interview, Pele is telling about his life journey and travel difficulties in his time and praising the service of Emirates (Borkakoty, 2014). In their YouTube channel, they post videos about how heavy and delicate things are carried delicately with Emirate's planes such as expensive pianos or cars. They also collaborate with strong youtubers to share their appreciation on their own channels about flight experience and unique service such as showers on board. (Millington, 2017)

Southwest Airlines is the third largest airline on YouTube by the number of subscribers with 217 thousand. In February 2019; Southwest Airlines shared 2 videos and generated 97 interactions. It is important that an airline form United States get in top three on social media only on YouTube despite their leadership and advantage in the airline industry in terms of brand value, number of passengers and fleet size. Since 2007, they uploaded 496 video and generated 20 million views. Unlike other airlines, Southwest is posting videos on their channel about their charity contributions and facilitations for flying with pets. They also post funny videos of their employees such as singing or playing harmonica crew on board or paper plane contest during delays (Southwest Airlines, 2014). Not only about employees but also, they share videos about their passengers who make interesting journeys such as a 28 years old man flying to meet with for the first time with his biological mother (Southwest Airlines, 2017).

Turkish Airlines is the second largest airline on YouTube by the number of subscribers with 347 thousand. In February 2019; Turkish Airlines shared 15 videos and generated 8.757. interactions. Since 2006, they uploaded 241 video and generated 766 million views. In their videos, they generously invested in the quality of their advertisements and cooperated with the most famous directors and producers of cinema such as Ridley Scott. Moreover, during 10^th anniversary celebrations of YouTube, Turkish Airline's advertisement with “flying to more countries than any airline” tagline, rewarded as the advertisement of the decade with its record views. The basketball star Kobe Bryant and the football star Leo Messi played in a series of advertisements of Turkish Airlines and each advertisement generated around 150 million view and this advertisement has become the most-watched advertisement ever on YouTube. (Jarboe G., 2016)

Turkish Airlines also has carried out many high levels of sponsorships and advertisings. For example, they have been largest presence ever as an airline in American National Football League Super Bowl which has been watched by 112 million people in United States and 800 million people worldwide. In 2017, they made a 45 seconds advertising with Morgan Freeman, an Oscar winner Hollywood actor, spelling out the value of world travel and meeting new people with a slogan “to delight our differences”. In 2018, Turkish Airlines made a 90 seconds advertising with Dr. Mehmet Oz, a Turkish American television personality, enjoying exciting spots on the earth and highlighting “five senses” with a slogan “there is a world of miracles inside our bodies”. In 2019, Turkish Airlines worked with famous director and producer Ridley Scott and made a 6 minutes short movie advertising including iconic places in Istanbul and a journey with Turkish Airlines. (Anadolu Agency, 2018)

On YouTube channel, Turkish Airlines is telling the story of their global - local strategy in Japan. Turkish Airlines find a midpoint between two far away countries and promote their sponsorship in the Japan Basketball League. Turkish fans tribune culture's passion and Japan's karaoke cultures fun is combined by using basketball's universal language and they create “Basukettoke. Basukettoke is a dance with three basic figures symbolizing the power, courage and victory. Turkish Airlines posted a introduction video on their social media pages and their video is watched 2 million times, created 32 thousand interaction and acquired 10000 followers in two weeks. 11 practitioners of Basukettoke awarded and over 30 thousand fun made Basukettoke on the final match. (Turkish Airlines, 2015)

Other than above mentioned most viewed videos on their YouTube channel, Turkish Airlines also made a partnership with Warner Bros in “Batman vs Superman” movie that in famous Hollywood actors such as Jesse Eisenberg and Ben Affleck. They specially themed Boeing 777 outfitted with superhero imagery and made product placement. (Loughrey, 2016)

2.3 Analysis of Posting Actions and the Content Theme of Turkish Airlines on Social Media

The study will be held in the form of desk research, which involves the processing of the secondary information collected from the open sources as the Turkish Airlines official pages on YouTube, Facebook and Instagram. This method has been chosen due to the advantage of eliminating Hawthorne effect, which is caused by the researchers bias and direct interactions with the subjects. Moreover, through unobtrusive research we can investigate the information generated in the past and clarify our research question. (Villiers, 2015)

We analyzed their way of customer engagement on social media by posting time, content type and content theme in accordance with the previous literature. (Cvijkj & Michahelles, 2013) (Fortin and Dholakia, 2005) (Sabate et al., 2014) In our case study, we proposed three hypotheses, each of which touching posting time, content type and content theme of Turkish Airlines. We tested each of our hypotheses in the most relevant social media platform. We prefer to collect data from YouTube for content theme because Turkish Airlines have two playlists dedicated to different themes of Istanbul and other cities. We prefer Facebook for the analysis of content type because Facebook is the most flexible platform which enables users to choose the maximum variety of content type such as long videos, images or links.

We test our hypotheses by comparing the level of customer engagement numbers and measure the level by using formulas of previous studies (Xie, 2017) (Mariani, 2018) (Menichini, 2015). Since each social media platform supporting different interaction options, customer engagement formulas are different from each other.

H1: On the YouTube channel of Turkish Airlines, contents about the home city generates more customer engagement than contents about other cities.

There is a high competition among international airline companies to acquire new destination slots. When they start to fly in new routes, they heavily do marketing about their new destinations to inform their customers and to compete with already exiting companies. In addition, promoting destinations seduce people to make new travels. Therefore, in every international airline company has plenty of content about the new destination countries and cities. For example, Turkish Airlines has recently posted a video in “discover the world” playlist about big buddha monument, dim sum food culture and Chinese New Year celebrations in Hong Kong to promote their new destination.

On the other hand, global airline companies are allowed to make international flights only from their home country. As a result, most of the Turkish Airline passengers have to touch Istanbul as the starting point, ending point or connection point of their journey. Therefore, airline companies promoting their home city and country to attract more passengers to use their flight hub. Increasing popularity of the home city as a touristic destination and flight hub will contribute positively to the business of the global airline company.

On social media, all global airlines have significant amount of content about their home city and destination cities on their page owing to the above-mentioned reasons. But it is more important for Turkish Airlines because they fly to 300 destinations in 121 counties and their country coverage is greater than any other airline in the world. (Turkish Airline Fact Sheet, 31.12.2017) They tag “Istanbul experience” their posts about home city and tag “Discover the World” about other cities. We monitor 73 videos on their YouTube channel and calculated customer engagement of videos about Istanbul and other cities.

Table 11

Content Theme of Turkish Airlines

Turkish Airlines have 251 videos on their YouTube channel. Their 19 videos are highlighting the touristic attractions and beauty of Istanbul. In total, 19 videos have been watched more than 20 million times. Customer engagement of 19 videos are calculated with formula of Xie (2017) as 2,65:

x 1000 2,65

On the other hand, since we included all videos on their YouTube channel, the number of videos about Istanbul and other cities are not equal. To compare the customer engagement of each way, we will divide 2,65 by 19 to find the average customer engagement per video. 2,65/19 = 0,14

Among 251 videos, 54 of them are highlighting the touristic attractions and beauty of other cities. In total, 54 videos have been watched more than 9 million times. Customer engagement of 54 videos are calculated as 5:

x 1000 5

We divide 5 by 54 to find the average customer engagement per video. 5/54=0,09.

As a result, on YouTube channel, videos in “Discover the World” tag generates less customer engagement than the ones in “Istanbul Experience”. The result is not surprising on the grounds that total number of views about home city is more than two times higher than the total number of views about other cities. Consequently, videos about Istanbul have greater customer engagement than videos about other cities. H1 is confirmed.

H2: On the Instagram page of Turkish Airlines, posts on weekdays accumulate more customer engagement than weekends.

Global companies have customers in far distant counties all over the world and implementing policies targeting dispersed customers have always been a significant issue. In the global airline industry, the time for posting content is a tricky concept since the followers of the companies on social media are from different time zones of the world.

Instagram is a habit for most of its users, which they use periodically in their life. Those period cycles are different from user to user but disclosing a general tendency is useful for airline companies aiming to reach them. Instagram does not provide posting time of the content by hours, but it does by days and customer engagement of the companies on Instagram fluctuates in the different days of the week.

In this context, we monitor the official Instagram page of Turkish Airlines for 6 months and calculate customer engagement by days. We aimed to understand the level of customer engagement is higher whether in weekdays or in the weekends.

Table 12

Posting Day of Turkish Airlines (2018, October 7 - 2019, April 7)

Turkish Airlines shared 65 content on their official Instagram page in 24 weeks. They shared 19 content on the weekend and 46 in the weekday.

x100

We calculate the customer engagement of 19 content shared in the weekend as 42,25.

x100 42,25

On the other hand, since we monitored 24 weeks on their Instagram page, the number of contents shared in the weekends and the weekdays are not equal. To compare the customer engagement of each content, we will calculate average customer engagement per content in weekday and in weekend. Therefore, we divide 42,25 by 19 to find the average customer engagement per content in the weekend. 42,25/19 2,22

Among 65 contents, 46 of them are shared in the weekdays. Customer engagement of 46 contents are calculated as 78,16:

x100 78,16

We divide 78,16 by 46 to find the average customer engagement per content in weekdays. 78,16/461,70.

As a result, on the official page of Turkish Airlines, contents shared in the weekends generate more customer engagement than the ones in weekdays. H2 is rejected.

H3: On the Facebook page of Turkish Airlines, posts with images accumulate higher level of customer engagement than posts in video format.

Turkish Airlines collaborating with prominent agencies in the world and publishing high quality advertisements in online and offline platforms. As one of their social media strategies is posting their advertisements on social media before offline platforms. Since offline pl...