Tour Operators’ Perspective of the Macro Marketing Environment and Their Marketing Information Systems
Potgieter, M., Jager, J. W. de, & Heerden, N. H. van.
Abstract:
Tourism is recognised as a dynamic and competitive global force, influencing almost all countries and the lives of billions on a daily basis. Correspondingly, South Africa experiences an incessant escalation in international tourist arrivals and this progressively renders entrepreneurial opportunities, particularly in the domain of tour operating. Unfortunately this trend is not reflected by advancements in either the management models used and/or in the management decision-making ability of tour operators, neither in the support tools (such as a sophisticated marketing information system) available to tour operators. However, tourism is exceptionally susceptible to influences and factors stemming from the marketing environment and this necessitates tour operators to be knowledgeable in this regard, in terms of the probability of occurrences and also the severity thereof. Information thus becomes an indisputably precious asset that needs to be planned and managed strategically. The marketing environment is composed of the micro, market, and macro marketing environments and the focal point of this paper is the macro marketing environment and tour operating. The challenge of this study was to obtain a description of the research population and to determine empirically whether: tour operators in South Africa view macro marketing environmental information as part of marketing intelligence as important; and, whether they view information concerning the various factors of the macro marketing environment as important. An exhaustive review of existing academic literature directed the conceptualization of this pioneering research in South Africa. A quantitative descriptive survey was undertaken and a research frame was constructed with the aid of various published sources and electronic databases. The research instrument used was a realtime web-based self-completing questionnaire which was dispatched to 1 000 tour operators and six highly-priced sponsored incentives were provided in an endeavour to increase the response rate. A completion rate of 42% was recorded. Inferential statistics revealed that 59.6% of the tour operators in South Africa do have some sort of information system whilst only 41.9% of them indicated that they do have access to marketing intelligence although most do view this type of information as important. Tour operators view it as important that an information system should be able to provide them with macro marketing environment information. The current information systems used by tour operators in South Africa do not necessarily provide them with adequate information they need for management decision-making purposes and the reason for this is ascribed to the types of information systems used. Tour operators mostly use a personal computer withgeneral data analysis programmes and this cannot be viewed as a sophisticated marketing information system providing tour operators with macro marketing environment information needed for management decision-making purposes. Pragmatically, the results obtained indicate that information system innovation for tour operators in South Africa is indubitably imperative. Sequential research should be undertaken and it should be extended to incorporate all the sectors of tourism, as well as the member countries of the Southern African Developing Community (SADC) for not only comparative purposes but to investigate potential synergistic social and economic benefits on a national and regional basis, specifically in terms of marketing information systems and ultimately tourism.
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APA citation
- Potgieter, M., Jager, J. W. de, & Heerden, N. H. van. (2013). Tour Operators’ Perspective of the Macro Marketing Environment and Their Marketing Information Systems. International Journal of Social Sciences, II(1), 65–80.