The paper develops a model of destination competitiveness that will enable comparisons between countries and between tourism sector industries. The model seeks to capture the main elements of competitiveness highlighted in the general literature, while appreciating the special issues involved in exploring the notion of destination competitiveness as emphasised by tourism researchers. Associated with the model is a set of indicators that can be used to measure the competitiveness of any given destination. These indicators, comprising both objective and subjective measures, were identified from the major elements comprising the generic destination competitiveness model and also from discussions at workshops held in Korea and Australia. This paper has four major objectives: to develop a model of destination competitiveness that identifies key success factors in determining destination competitiveness; to develop an appropriate set of indicators of destination competitiveness; to highlight the advantages and ...

Destination competitiveness: determinants and indicators

The ideas of relationship marketing have so far mainly been applied to industrial and services marketing, but may also have some relevance for consumer marketing. This paper suggests that marketing relationships will be easier to form in some types of consumer market than others, and that this inherent “relationship‐friendliness” will depend upon certain characteristics of both the market segment and the product field in question. A simple typology of consumer markets is proposed as a basis for further research in this field: it is suggested that suppliers can take action, including offering incentives, to increase the natural relationship potential of a particular product market, but that care should be taken to distinguish between actions that aim to develop marketing relationships and actions that are more appropriately interpreted and evaluated as sales promotions.

Relationship marketing in consumer markets

This article launches a new framework, the Tourism Experience Network (TEN), which explores co-creation of experiences. The TEN framework absorbs value as experience logic in tourism marketing. Its uniqueness illustrates structuring processes and includes consumers/tourists in the service management. A theoretical explorative technique based on literature was used to construct the TEN. It departures from interactive networks, new service paradigm and tourism marketing, and contributes to tourism experience theories. Inspiration from the Industrial Marketing and Purchasing (IMP) group was embraced to modify issues inherent from traditional networks—the ARA model. By linking this approach with experience, actors are defined as experience facilitators in tourism and networks. Copyright © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Tourism Experience Network: Co‐creation of Experiences in Interactive Processes

Competitiveness is one of the most misunderstood concepts of the 1990s. It has drawn substantial attention from the government and business communities during the last 25 years. Morrisson et al. (1988) noted that between 1983 and 1987, the term competitiveness appeared more than 5700 times in the titles of newspapers and magazine articles. The growth of importance and interest can also be observed from the increase in the bibliographical entries in ABI/Inform database. From 1981 to 1986, the topic “international competitiveness” increased by about 26 listings per year (a total of 159 in 6 years) and the rate increased to 45 listings per year from 1987 to 1993. Academic interest in the area has also increased and as a result, new developments contemplating conceptualization and understanding of competitiveness are taking place. However, to no one's surprise, writers from different disciplines offer a variation in perspective when describing the concept, understanding, and postulation of competitiveness.

Definition, perspectives, and understanding of international competitiveness: a quest for a common ground

This paper presents an analysis of customer choice criteria in the retail banking market in the UK. Specifically, it investigated potential variations in the importance of various choice criteria,which were classified as either intrinsic or extrinsic in order to aid analysis with respect to customer financial knowledge. A database of 6700 respondents collected by a commercial organization was used in the analysis. The results suggest that all customers rely primarily upon extrinsic choice criteria when choosing a retail banking service. In addition, low financial knowledge is associated with a propensity to choose a bank purely on location or by recommendation and, whilst such factors are also important to higher financial knowledge groups, higher knowledge groups are more likely to take account of intrinsic attributes such as service features, rate of return and low fees in their choice.

Customer knowledge and choice criteria in retail banking

This paper argues that the offering—what customers choose to buy—should be the primary focus of competitive strategy. A classification of competitive strategies based solely on how an offering could be positioned is developed, and a new output‐ or buyer‐based vocabulary devised for it. It is argued that this language provides a surer way of becoming customer orientated than an input‐ or seller‐based language. This new perspective leads to a surprising and novel insight about the appropriate unit for framing competitive strategy. It also helps in providing a more realistic model of the dynamics of competitive strategy, and the role it plays in achieving profitability. Finally, the new language and concepts are put to the test; it is shown that they are of practical value, since they would help managers in better framing and answering some key competitive questions.

Shiv Sahai Mathur

Papers

Talking straight about competitive strategy