The Value of Cluster Association for Digital Marketing in Tourism Regional Development

Abstract

This paper analyses the advantages of membership in a cluster in the effective use of digital marketing tools and in a general way, in the performance, especially for the small and medium firms in underdeveloped regions. For this purpose, a case method research was conducted in the tourism sector, specifically in the hotels in the La Guajira Department, Colombia, where there is a regional tourism cluster. The tourism sector especially depends on digital marketing and the proper use of available digital marketing tools play an essential role in the performance. To conduct the study, 40 hotels in La Guajira were analyzed, whether or not they were members in the cluster. The obtained data were assessed by means of fuzzy set Qualitative Comparative Analysis to check the hypotheses. The results reveal the most effective combinations of digital marketing tools and the activities in which especially small and medium firms must engage in the cluster to obtain better results.

Influencers in Tourism Digital Marketing: A Comprehensive Literature Review

“…Notably, there were only two articles published in 2019 [39,40]. Whereas in 2020, as few as four articles were published by [1,[41][42][43], to be more specific can be seen in Figure 3.…”

“…Overall, the next two years saw no significant change in the number of (directly) related studies on the topic, but the number rose significantly in 2022 when the need to meet the challenge in the advancement of technology and the post-COVID recovery faced by tourism sectors both in the developed and developing countries were well recognized by businesses around the globe (as shown in Figure 4). Source: prepared and compiled by the authors Figure 4 above depicts that many of the selected articles were published in developed countries such as Russia [15,44], Spain [41,43], Portugal [7,8,40,45], Finland [46], Italy [29], and also United Kingdom [42]. On the other hand, relevant researches on digital marketing and the tourism industry were also conducted in developing countries such as Ukraine [1,40], Greece [6,47], Indonesia [39], Serbia [48], Pakistan [49], and Thailand [12].…”

Analysis of local heritage tourism development strategy in Indonesia: Case study in Purbayan Village

“…According to studies conducted in developing countries, the division of local tourism clusters in the adoption of digital marketing produces better results [32]. Because of the ineffective use of digital technology in small tourism businesses.…”

Research on the impact of boundary-spanning search on the sustainable development ability of service-oriented manufacturing enterprises: evidence from Chinese listed companies

“…It is very important for enterprises to meet customer needs through service and provide customers with product and service portfolios that exceed the value of existing products to improve the SDA of enterprises (Shin et al, 2022). On the one hand, to meet customer needs through BSMK, enterprises not only seek to understand and track customers' attitudes and opinions from a broad and accurate market perspective (Tarazona Montoya et al, 2020), timely identify and explore customers' needs, preferences, pain points and potential needs in the market (Zhang et al, 2017) but also, expand the customer base, improve market share (Xiong et al, 2020) and further expand the scale, improve profitability and promote SDA. On the other hand, enterprises acquire the knowledge of competitors and partners through BSMK to improve their own management mode, incentive mode and decision-making path (Xiao and Zhu, 2016).…”