Preparing for the new economy: Advertising strategies and change in destination marketing organisations.

Journal of Travel Research. November 2000. Ulrike Gretzel, Yu Lan Yuan, Daniel Fresenmaier.

Summary:

This articles serves to consolidate and build upon the discussion conducted by the National Laboratory for Tourism and eCommerce (USA). This discussion highlights some of the major areas of consideration within the internet and destination marketing organisations. In addition to this, the debate within this article also supports and outlines a number of academic theories and authors. Despite not being in adventure tourism, the principals do relate very easily. 

Since the technology itself is available to almost everyone, its use alone does not necessarily bring a competitive advantage.

This is an extremely worthwhile point, companies often think more about the fact that they need a web site than what it will do and the strategies they will employ in order to gain maximum competitive advantage from the medium.

It is difficult for most companies to keep pace. They often have to struggle with limited financial and human resources, a lack of technological expertise, and time constraints.

This is a very relevant consideration within business, especially those within the adventure tourism industry, which by nature are typically small. Does the company really have the resources to create and maintain a web site?

Current advertising spent on the internet (eg: banners etc.) is estimated at $2 Billion to $3 Billion a year in the United States alone.

This seems amazing considering there has been no research to establish that it actually works.

Leading advertisers do not simply use the web for putting up banners, they create fully functioning businesses. Besides direct marketing and branding, these web sites offer extranets for suppliers, intranets for employees, and a variety of sales and service links for customers.

This is very important, but due to the size of the organisations within the industry, you must wonder as to whether all these things are really viable.

Internet advertising differs from other media by enabling consumers to interact with the advertisement.

The fact that people can actually interact with the advertisement is one of the biggest advantages with promoting on-line. If a consumer is interested in the product or brand then they can simply click on it and be taken to their web site.

In comparison to traditional media, the internet combines and integrates the following functional properties:

-         Information representation

-         Collaboration

-         Communication

-         Interactivity, and

-         Transactions.

Little time gap between the production of information, and its possible distribution.

This also adds pressure to have an up-to date web site.

These implications affect business on the internet tremendously, there is a real perception that information should be completely up-to date on the internet, and large amounts of dissatisfaction arise if it is not. A related topic to this is the issue that as a result of employee’s having to put up information quickly, often it is not thoroughly checked and as such there is often spelling and grammatical errors.

To install communication tools is easy, to handle the increased volume of communication is not. If resources are dedicated only to the development of the site but not to the ongoing management of inquiries, the full potential of the technologies will not be reached.

In even harsher terms, if the company does keep the web site up-to date and interesting for those who are searching then this will dramatically affect the opinions of those internet surfers.

The real opportunity on the web is not doing things faster and cheaper; instead the real opportunity is to rethink the business models that organisations employ, both in terms of delivering value to the customer and in building relationships with customers, suppliers, and other business partners.

This opinion provides a fresh and innovative viewpoint to the benefits of the internet. If this were to happen there would be much benefit to those companies because it means they must re-assess their current business models and assumptions. This therefore provides the opportunity for them to identify that the original model wasn’t completely correct. 

Most web sites still ignore the unique possibilities of interactive media. Organisations continue to broadcast information instead of letting the consumer interact with the web site content.

This point can be support by the majority of sites on the web. In general interactive characteristics are kept to a minimum. While there is added cost in this interactive feature, the benefit to the consumer has been discussed within numerous academic articles, and does seem to be relatively logical.

Success factors:

Attract              Attract consumers to                Audience creation

                        the application                          Mnemonic branding

                                                                        Piggy-back advertising

Engage             Generate interest and                Intuitive interface or navigation participation                               Interactive content

                                                                        User generated content

 Retain              Make sure customer’s              Dynamic content

                         come back                               Transaction capabilities

                                                                        Online communities

 Learn               Learn about customer               Information capture

                        preferences                               Continuous preference learning.

 Relate               Customize interaction and        Personalised/customised communication value delivery                                     and product/ services

                                                                        Real time interactions

                                                                        Linkage to core business.

While this model is relatively straight forward, it is advantageous because it does get

people thinking about the different aspects. One area that is questionable is that of the

required transaction capabilities. Especially within Australia and New Zealand, this

has been slow to develop mainstream adoption.  

Customisation of the advertising message and the medium is even more important for advertising on the web than for campaigns in traditional media. Fortunately, the use of log files and cookies enables the collection of immense amounts of detailed information about web users 

This is one interesting but extremely controversial area to do with the internet. While the use of cookies and other such devices does allow recognition and customisation, there has been debate as to the immoral and deceitful nature of these devices. In addition there are problems with this if only cookies are used without login codes if the individual computer has multiple users.

Difference between surfing and searching which influences the amount of information sought, the importance of details for the user, degree of patience that can be expected etc.

While relatively straight forward, this does seem logical. If the participant is actively searching a site they will be more willing to wait a longer time than if they were surfing. This does of cause relate to other aspects as well.

Web site design should reflect the characteristics of the medium, the customers, and the competitive environment. It should be embedded in the organisational culture and structure, aligned with the application domain, and used for strategic positioning.

This, while not commonly expressed it is relatively logical. The web site should convey messages regarding the culture of the business, what their competitive advantage is etc. This is no different from other media vehicles.

Web mainly pull focused (ie: consumer actively searching) but more and more web sites are offering free screensavers which form a push strategy.

Currently this topic has largely avoided debate, but the introduction of screensavers for this reason is an interesting idea.

On the web, brand names matter even more because of the prevailing information overload. It also strongly affects the levels of trust.

Novelty on the web is easily imitated and wears off soon, therefore most companies will continue to rely on offline media to build their brands.

At the end of the day there are an extremely low number of companies, if any, that could afford to only concentrate on only the internet and no other marketing vehicles. It is for this reason that often a businesses internet presence will be linked to an integrated marketing communications plan.

* All text in red indicates quotes taken from the full text article.