ICHTS 2019 2nd International Conference on Humanities, Technology and Science

1. ICHTS 20192nd International Conference on Humanities, Technology and Science • The Use and Effectiveness of Social Media Towards Wedding Cultural Diversity Knowledge: A Study of The Wedding Vendors in Bali, Indonesia Presented by: Virgie Co-Authors: Rahilah Binti Ahmad Rohizan Binti Ahmad Date: 4th October, 2019 (Friday) Venue: APU New Campus

2. Overview… • Introduction & Problem statement • Review of Literature • Research Methodology • Research Findings • Discussion & Conclusion

3. Background of The Study • Since the emergence of new media, social media has been popularized in the global society (Knapp, 2016). • Intercultural adaptation implies to the process of gaining knowledge, so that the cultural adjustment towards new environment can be accommodated (Sawyer, 2011). • There are some changes in socio-economic sphere of modern society that impacted wedding tourism destinations worldwide (Rogerson, 2015). • In this exploratory study, Bali has been selected as the study region. Bali is one of the favorite wedding destinations in Indonesia. It is shown by the increasing number of weddings held in Bali whereby the local testimonial mentioned that close to 10,000 foreign weddings are celebrated annually in Bali (David, 2014).

4. Problem Statement • The knowledge of certain elements in the wedding cultural tends to be difficult to learn, because the wedding cultural increasingly fades along with the times (Maheshwari, 2018). Unfortunately, what is mentioned above is now considered a legendary problem, which means that they are not considered a priority. • The main problem in wedding industry, specifically in Bali is the condition in which social media cannot provide sufficient information for wedding vendors, and researcher believe that most wedding vendors rely on social media as the first source of information related to wedding cultural diversity. • Apart from the importance of wedding cultural diversity knowledge in the wedding industry and its impact on increasing profits, this industry has been unnoticed at all in academic researches. Purpose of The Study • The purpose of this study is to examine how wedding vendor companies as users are gaining wedding culture diversity knowledge by using social media for the success of wedding cultural diversity, why the selected media of choice is being preferred by these users and to evaluate how effective social media is in playing its part in gaining wedding cultural diversity knowledge. • Since literature shows that the two topics which are wedding culture diversity and social media has not been highlighted enough, this research targets to fill in that potential gap. • This study explores the benefits of social media for users and the potential future users in understanding and sharing wedding cultural diversity.

5. Research Objectives • To examine how wedding vendor companies as users are gaining wedding culture diversity knowledge by using social media for the success of wedding cultural diversity and why they prefer the selected social media. • To evaluate the effectiveness of social media in gaining wedding culture diversity knowledge.

6. Research Design & Sampling Population Respondents Mr Christian : Wedding Organizer – Bali Chemistry Wedding MrsRuri : Wedding Make up Ms Mike : Wedding Decoration – Butterfly Event Styling Ms Glady : Wedding Tableware – Semeja Mrs Rani : Wedding Master of Ceremony Mrs Kiki : Wedding Band – Soulfeggio Band Ms Adel : Wedding Catering – Lumbung Catering MrAdec : Wedding Photographer – Dream Studio Photoworks • Type of research : Qualitative Research • Population : Wedding vendors in Bali, Indonesia • Sample Frame : Owner or marketing of eight wedding vendors • Sampling Methodology : Purposive Sampling Method • Qualified Respondent : 1) Indonesian 2) Wedding vendor company 3) Serve wedding cultural diversity 4) Owner or Marketing of the company • Location : Bali, Indonesia • Research Philosophy : Interpretivism • Time Horizon : Cross-sectional • Data Analysis Methodology : Thematic analysis • Instrumentation : Interview

7. Table of Themes

8. Table of Themes

9. Conclusion The results of this qualitative study indicate that social media has changed the way wedding vendors develop their business in gaining wedding cultural knowledge. The findings in this study are referred back to the research objectives: • To examine how wedding vendors companies as users are gaining wedding culture knowledge diversity by using social media for the success of cultural weddings and why they prefer the selected social media : • The most important social media that the wedding vendors use to gain wedding culture diversity knowledge is Instagram and Pinterest. • Beside Instagram and Pinterest, the common social media platform in the wedding industry to gain wedding culture diversity knowledge is Google. • The most subscribed channels seem to be one, Bridestory. • To gain wedding culture diversity through social media, some respondents also follow the wedding industry blogger as a role model. They follow the wedding industry bloggers related to their fields. • There are other goals in the following industry wedding bloggers, to learn about skills and to share knowledge among wedding vendors. • There are other respondents who feel they don't follow a particular page, but when something interests them, they easily use social media to find relevant content. • To evaluate the effectiveness of social media in gaining wedding culture diversity knowledge. : • The research found that the effectiveness of social media in gaining wedding culture diversity knowledge is agreed by 75% of the respondents. • Beside that, through social media, they find it easier to get information widely, speed, lots of variety, inspiration and ideas. • Some respondents felt that social media made them aware of their client's basic wedding culture and effective for research and development as well. • Another good point here is, they are also able to understand the basic knowledge of their client's culture.

10. Limitation • There is limited academic literature surrounding the wedding industry. • Another limitation of this study is the resources. Wedding vendors that provide services for wedding cultural diversity in Bali are very limited. • Some of those who have confirmed their participation had withdrawn several days before the actual meeting. As a result, researchers suffer from some difficulty finding possible replacements. • Further studies in this field should focus more on the benefit, challenge and marketing strategy for wedding vendors who serve wedding culture diversity especially in developing city like Bali, Indonesia. • Future studies may want to explore from a verity of sources such as wedding clients, in order to establish comparisons or arguments that could help in bringing out richer information regarding the relationship between social media, wedding cultural diversity and wedding vendors. • Further studies should be conducted on the wedding cultural diversity for each specific region in Indonesia to see how the regions actually compare. Recommendation