Introduction to Strategic

Tourism Marketing
What is marketing?
“The activity, set of institutions, and processes
for creating, communicating, delivering and
exchanging offerings for customers, clients,
partners, and society at large.”
- AMA
 Marketing as a systematic thought
process
• Marketing means exchanges – between
customers and the producers
• All marketing involves a management decision
process for producers, focused on a customer
decision process, with the two sets of
decisions coming together in an exchange
transaction.
• Marketing at a strategic level reflects a
particular set of strongly held attitudes and
commitment on the part of senior
management – a marketing oriented
corporate culture.
• Marketing orientation vs. product/production
orientations, and sales orientation.
“ The marketing concept holds that the key to
achieving organizational goals consists in
determining the needs and wants of target
markets and delivering the desired
satisfactions more effectively and efficiently
than competitors in a way that preserves or
enhances the customers’ and society’s well
being.”
– Philip Kotler
The Five Marketing Propositions
1. Marketing is a management orientation.
2. It consists of three main elements linked
together within a system of exchange
transactions – the attitudes and decisions of
target customers, the attitudes and decisions
of producers, and the way in which producers
communicate with consumers.
3. Marketing is concerned with the long term
(strategy) and short term (tactics).
4. Marketing is especially relevant to analyzing
twenty-first century market conditions and
can make a major contribution to sustainable
development.
– Conditions that favor large scale operations but
not mass tourism
– Conditions that also favor competitive small
businesses
5. Facilitates the efficient and effective conduct
of business through monitoring and control.
The Special Characteristics of Travel
and Tourism Marketing
 Large scale service operations dominate
travel and tourism marketing
• Characteristics of large scale operations:
– Production and sale of purpose-designed, repeatable,
quality controlled products.
– Typically heavily branded with advertising support and
bearing
– standard prices (with variations by place and time).
– Products available at many places (multiple outlets).
– Continuous production and availability throughout the
year.
– Most marketing undertaken by corporate head offices,
which control and direct the activities at individual
outlets.
• Levitt argues that industrialized service
production systems which can be achieved by
reducing the level of discretion available to
service staff through the use of standardized
procedures and technology.
• This however does not mean mass production.
• The relative size of businesses is more important
in determining marketing responses than
whether or not they are in goods or services.
 The Paradox:
• A vast number of small businesses is also a
dominating characteristic of the tourism industry.
• Individually micro businesses are insignificant,
but collectively they occupy a significant share of
the tourism industry.
• They form a core part of all tourist experiences.
• They are economically, socially and
environmentally important but also have some
disadvantages. Can you think of some?
 Characteristics of services
• Intangibility: Services cannot easily be
measured, touched or evaluated at the point
of sale before performance.
• Perishability: Services cannot be stored.
• Inseparability: The act of production and
consumption is simultaneous.
• Variability: Every service performance is
unique to each customer.
 Particular Characteristics of Travel
and Tourism Services
• Seasonality and other variations in the pattern
of demand.
• The high fixed cost of operations.
• The interdependence of tourism products.
 The Marketing Response to these
Characteristics:

• Inseparability and
intangibility
Demand Management • Perishability
Capacity Management • Seasonality
• High fixed costs
• Interdependence
 Factors Influencing Demand for
Tourism
• Economic factors and comparative prices
• Demographics, including education
• Geographic
• Socio cultural attitudes towards tourism
• Mobility
• Government/regulatory
• Media communications
• ICT
 Individual Motivations and Buyer
Behavior
• The psychological or internal influences
affecting individuals’ choices are commonly
known as motivations.
• Marketing managers expect to influence
choices through information, branding,
promotion, and other marketing mix
decisions.
 Classifying travel motivations
• Business or work related motives
• Physical/physiological motives
• Cultural/psychological/personal education
motives
• Social/interpersonal and ethnic motives
• Entertainment/amusement/pleasure/ pastime
motives
• Religious motives
Classifying buyers by attitude types
• Sustenance driven groups
– These are people of all ages, mostly in the lower
socioeconomic groups, whose attitudes and behavior
patterns are driven by fear for the future and needs
for security.
• Outer directed groups
– People of all social groups and education levels, with
sufficient income and confidence to overcome their
security worries, and able to exercise their purchasing
preferences and choices according to their
perceptions of quality of life.
Classifying buyers by attitude types
• Inner directed groups
– People from all social catefories and income
levels. Their criteria for behavior and purchases lie
within themselves and reflect self reliance, self
expression and self realization.
Buyer behavior model for travel and
tourism
 Buyer Behavior Model
• Process 1: Products Input
– It covers the whole range of products and product
mixes that are designed to motivate individuals and
are made available to prospective customers.
• Process 2: Communication Channels
– There are the formal communication channels or
media aimed at persuading prospective buyers.
– There is also extensive information accessible to
individuals informally through their family, friends and
the groups of people with whom they interact at work
and socially – known in the jargon as ‘reference
groups’.
 Buyer Behavior Model
• Process 3: Perception filters in the…
– These filters serve in practice to suppress much of
the available information and to highlight specific
parts, often distorting it in the reception process.
The message the marketing manager sends is not
necessarily the same as the message the
prospective buyer receives.
 Buyer Behavior Model
• Process 4: Buyer characteristics, the decision
process and motivation
– This is the core element of the buyer behavior model.
– Grouped around the central focus of needs, wants and
goals, there are four main interacting elements, which
combine to determine an individual buyer’s
disposition to act in certain ways.
– These elements act sometimes to provide or reinforce
the motivation and sometimes as constraints upon
purchase decisions.
 Buyer Behavior Model
• Process 5: Purchase choices/decions/outputs
– The point to be understood here is that action on
purchases is linked directly to motivations, which
in turn are linked to the buyers’ characteristics
defined earlier.
– Motivations may be influenced through marketing
decisions, especially product design and the ways
products are presented to prospective purchasers.
 Buyer Behavior Model
• Process 6: Post purchase and post
consumption feeling
– Once a customer is sufficiently motivated to buy a
product, the experience of consumption will affect
all future attitudes towards it.
Personal and Situational Variables
Thank You!!