This document summarizes Dr. Stephen Dann's presentation on contrasting the branded experience of Legoland from social media and in-person visits. It discusses conceptual frameworks on service quality and the communications gap. Literature on Legoland discusses how it cannot replicate virtual spaces and uses bounded features and narrative. The methodology section outlines collecting Instagram data from official Legoland accounts and in-park, including promise books and text analysis. Preliminary analysis found the official accounts focused on the park while in-park photos were often of people. Future research questions explore if user creativity is reflected in shared content and comparing social media timelines to the physical experience.

1. Bricks, Clicks and Order:
Contrasting the Branded Experience of Legoland from social media and social proximity.
Dr Stephen Dann

2. Presentation Structure
• Brief run through the fun literature
• Methods
• Data
• Commentary

3. Underpinning conceptual frameworks
Parasuraman, A., Zeithaml, V. A., & Berry, L. L. (1985). A conceptual model of service
quality and its implications for future research. the Journal of Marketing, 41-50.

4. Underpinning conceptual frameworks

5. Gap 4: Comms Gap

6. Legoland
• Kelly (n.d.)
• “Legoland is a space that cannot replicate the spacelessness of the virtual”
• “You do not exist in Legoland by force of will”
• Said et al (2001)
• Every lego sign has a human agent
• Lego constructions call for a narrative
• Kermode (2013)
• Legoland uses bounded features and activity that are named and performed

7. Legomontage

8. Legolish
• Legolish
• the visual medium of communication that imbues messages with an order,
nostalgia and positive affective association (Said et al. 2001)

9. Legoland
• Forstner (2010)
• Legoland as the idealised real world
• Sable (2007)
• Legolisation conveys authenticity
• Jeffers (2004)
• A cultural vortex, designed for movement, through which we travel…

10. Jeffers (2004): cultural vortex, designed for movement
Source: Runkeeper Pro tracking GPS data

11. Co-creation of value
• Jeffers (2004)
• Legoland as a place of leisure created by experiential
maps and personal stories
• Vargo and Lusch
• Customers perform self-service in the creation of their
own value from consumption
• Ardill (2008)
• Experience rewarded by investment of time, effort,
energy, and emotion

12. Research Agenda
• Observe the Legoland created social media
• Instagram as focal point
• Promise Books, Leximancer Analysis
• Observe the Legoland Physical Environment
• Billund, Windsor, Gunzburg
• On the ground photography
• Observe the consumer tagged environment
• Instagram

13. Methodology
• Three Phases
1. Collecting the Instagram timelines
Save-o-gram
Create a PDF “promise book”
Analysis Instagram text with Leximancer
2. Observational data collection in Legoland
3. Contrast the #hashtag with timeline
Websta.me for searches
4thcoming: Tripadvisor reviews

14. Instagram Search
• Each site uses an official hashtag, with an
encouragement to users to post their images
to the tag.
• http://websta.me/

15. Promise Books

16. Instagram Text via Leximancer
Billund
sunshine
lego
Windsor

17. Preliminary Data Analysis
• #legolandwindsor versus @legolandwindsor
• #legolandbillund versus @legolandbillund
• #legolanddeutschland versus… ?

18. Social Media Data
• Borrowing from choice modelling
• Revealed preference (actual activity)
• Stated preference (experimental design / intentions)
• Social Media provides revealed preferences
• Instagram posts are deliberate editorial choices
• Yelp / Trip advisor are revealed preferences

19. http://websta.me/
legolandwindsor legolandbillund

20. Questions to explore
• How then is the Legoland experience reflected
when captured by users within the parkland?
• Do they reflect the Lego Instagram presence,
using the account as a set of Lego Plans for a
Lego Holiday?

22. User Captured Experience
• Within park observations
• Landscapes
• Younger children with mobile devices (iPads, iPhones or
small cameras
• Older adults with DSLRs
• Video cameras (early teens)
• Child within parkscape
• Parents with mobile phones
• Parent A demonstrating to Parent B / trip sponsors that fun is
being had…
• Limited observation of the #selfie, yet…

24. Summary Analysis: User Experience (3 parks)
• Hashtag was a balance of park and people
• Official sites dominated by park
• In park performance “Photos for the absent”
• The Red Balloon Photo
• [a souvenir just to prove the world was here]
• Numerous parents posing children to send photos to
family to showcase the holiday was happening
• Convenience Sample
• n = 100 most recent http://websta.me/ per park

25. N = 100 most recent images
Park Park Experience People Not park
Windsor 38 52 10
Billund 51 39 10
Deustchland 49 44 7
138 135 27
46% 45% 9%

26. Subsequent Analysis: Thematic Clusters
• Rides
• Food
• Miniland
• Characters
• Events
• People

27. Future Research Questions
• Does the creativity emphasized in Lego play
present itself in the cocreated user messages?

28. Creative Bounded Consumption
• Bounded Co-created
Consumption
• 100 grams of Lego (10 euros)
• 6 Minifigures (10 euros)
• Daily rationing of the bricks to
100g
• Get creative within fixed limits

29. The Research Pipeline
• Larger sampling of the #hashtag to contrast the
promise books
• Depth coding of promise and reality
• Self Generated User Experience
• Tripadvisor data
• Social Media Timeline Analysis
• Twitter accounts
• Facebook data?
• Miniland Data Analysis

30. Miniland Brands: Actual versus Legolish

31. @Stephendann | Stephen.dann@anu.edu.au | Stephen@stephendann.net
https://www.facebook.com/operationlegoland
#operationlegoland