Introduction - Tourism Marketing - page 3

Tourism marketing foundations
The handbook is structured into nine sections. The fi rst and last sections each contain two
chapters. The introductory part deals with fundamental paradigmatic issues that refl ect both
shifts in the context of marketing practice ( Chapter 2 ) and our understanding of what constitutes
value for tourists ( Chapter 3 ). Xiang (Robert) Li begins by situating the current state of upheaval
within the fi eld of marketing within a historical context in Chapter 2 . Marketing, born out of
classical economic theory, initially concerned with understanding the functions of markets and
the nature of value in exchange relationships, has evolved over the last century to become an
established socio-economic process. The continued unfolding of technological developments has
accelerated change in business innovation and consumer markets, the knowledge economy. The
consequential structural changes to social relationships brought about by Internet and digital
technology adoption has forced a radical shift in thinking about the function of marketing,
taking us back to almost fundamental principles.
These can be summarized fi rstly, as the general shift in thinking about the role of marketing
in this new knowledge economy, that fi rms should focus their energies on bringing together
dynamic, specialized competences, knowledge and skills to create and deliver service, which
should be the basis for all business activity, the new service-dominant logic (SDL) (Vargo and
Lusch 2004). Secondly, a fundamental principle of SDL is that customers should also be treated
as operant resources, bringing their skills, experience and knowledge into the relationship with
fi rms, and it is through this process and only through this process that value can be created, in
use.Value is co-created jointly and contextually by the company and the customer (Prahalad and
Ramaswamy 2004). The fi rst part of the topic examines how these fundamental ideas in
marketing have been and can be related to tourism. This is critical because intuitively and
fundamentally tourism is a consumer experience that is primarily based on simultaneous
production and consumption, context-specifi c and collaboratively produced by tourists and
service employees.
In Chapter 2 , Li outlines the main propositions of SDL, and discusses the links between this
and related marketing concepts. He highlights some of the criticisms placed on this emerging
set of ideas, and goes on to assess the implications within the context of destination marketing,
arguing that DMOs have to reorient their thinking and activity to meet the demands of
consumers in the future. However, these implications have resonance for all sectors of tourism
marketing. In Chapter 3 , Prebensen examines the basis of tourist experience to understand how
value is conceived and perceived by tourists through their interactions with people and places.
Thinking about tourists as active agents, rather than the passive receptors of actions provided by
companies has a crucial consequence for tourism marketing research and yet there has been
limited attention from the tourism marketing academy on the value creation process. However,
this is dramatically changing with a slew of new studies emerging in the literature. Prebensen
defi nes and outlines the literature in value co-creation and discusses critical issues such as the
degree of involvement between the actors, the nature of tourist value as autotelic, and driven
by intrinsic goals. She argues that fi rms should understand the types of core values desired by
tourists from their experiences, and dramatize their service offers to meet those value expectations.
The themes explored in the two chapters in Part 1 resonate throughout the other parts and
chapters in this volume. This indicates both the desire for tourism researchers to engage with
foundational marketing theory and practice, and also a sense of the applicability of these ideas to
tourism marketing contexts. Tourists are knowledgeable actors, who, particularly in the developed
world, are eminently capable of deploying their skills to use technology to create their own travel
experiences. Tourism fi rms must look beyond the marketing management perspective to establish