Communicative Strategies

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Communicative Strategies

• Tourism Market Market Communication
• 27.10.08 / AT

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Content

• Marketing mix in tourism
• example New Zealand
• Different types of promotion
• IMC
• Communicative strategies
• the importances of photographs
• Media strategies
• the importance of blogging
• Evaluation of the course

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Marketing mix in tourism context (Weaver Lawton)

• Place
• the destination, closeness to markets,
  accessibility
• Product
• products/services/destination, quality /-
  controllable
• People
• personnel, tourists, locals
• Price
• offers pull factor, high price - indicates
  high quality
• Packaging Programming
• grouping of products package tours
• Partnerships
• horisontally or vertically
• Promotion
• Personal selling, sales promotion, PR,
  advertising, merchandising

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Different types of promotion their
strengths/weaknesses

• Advertising
• mass communication
• Sales promotion
• offers, discounts, competitions
• Personal selling
• adapted personal communication
• PR
• Mass communication not controlled by supplier

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IMC a holistic perspective

• A concept of marketing communications
  planning that recognizes the added value of a
  comprehensive plan that evaluates the strategic
  roles of a variety of communication disciplines
  for example, general advertising, direct
  response, sales promotion, and public relations
  an combines these disciplines to provide clarity,
  consistency and maximum communication impact
  (Belch Belch 2001 p.17).

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Good market communication two sets of rules

• Old rules
• identify USP
• use rational appeal
• avoid humour
• slogan logo important
• show product
• sameness in all promotion
• avoid creative promotion

• New rules
• identify ESP
• use emotional appeal
• humour often works
• slogan logo unneces.
• product unnecessary
• promotion types should be linked
• creativity often sells

(Morgan Pritchard 2001)
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Communicative strategies

• Telling (denotative)
• telling the reader what to think / how to react
• reveals the intention of text directly self
  praise

• Showing (connotative)
• involves reader in decoding
• appeals to readers phantasy build up a story

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Communicative Considerations

• How much information is enough?
• limited or detailed information depends on stage
  in decision making process
• How self-praising should you be?
• emphasise the best qualities of product, but
  exaggerated self-praise has counter-effect
• How to balance strengths weaknesses?
• emphasise strengths, actively countering weakness
  can be risky
• Should humour be used?
• distance to a self-appraising discourse but risky
  due to culture binding

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The importance of photographs in tourism (Hunter
2007)

• Important due to highly visual nature of tourism
• Provide a sense of objectivity -true
  descriptions
• but also suspicion of manipulation
• Instructs tourists in what to expect, ways of
  seeing, creation of their own photographs
• Data shows
• majority of heritage/material culture photos
• inhabited by no people
• uninhabited, groomed spaces, prepared for
  tourists
• not culture as hosts daily lives / host-guest
  interaction

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Media strategies (Weaver Lawton)

• Shotgun marketing
• Broad usage of media
• No focus on target groups media habits
• Target group may be hit by one single shot
• Can attract new target groups

• Rifle marketing
• Use of target groups specific media
• New target groups are more difficult to hit
• Competing products will advertise in the same
  places

Combination
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Media choice (Weaver Lawton)

• TV
• real life pictures of product attractive but
  expensive
• matching product programme
• product placement
• Radio
• matching product radio station / programme
• during work hours the radio reaches many
  potential customers
• Newspapers magazines
• static but available when the customer wants it
• Brochures
• still important media for destinations, travel
  agencies etc.
• 100 dedicated to promotion less noice, but
  also harder to get out
• Internet
• relatively cheap levels out promotion gap bxt
  small large companies
• interactive multimedia choice acc. own wishes
  contact possibilities

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Blogs in tourism (Schmallegger Carson 2007)

• Consumers trust amateur reviews more than
  professionally written guides promotion
• Blog characteristics
• Personal thoughts on a particular subject
• Interactive
• On-line democracy content provided by consumers
  for consumers (but also B2C, B2B, G2C)
• Social network no longer limited by physical
  location

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Blogs in tourism consumer perspective

• Why do people blog
• Desire for social interaction
• Concern for other consumers
• Potential for enhancing own self-worth
• Less venting frustrations

(Henning-Thurau et al. 2004)
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Blogs in tourism business perspective

• Why do businesses blog?
• Promote products build customer relationships
• Gain valuable market insight
• Cheaper than traditional advertising
• Problems involved
• Loss of credibility (sponsored blogs)
• How to manage content
• How to get enough content

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Blogs in tourism business perspective

• Market research via blogs
• Reflect the attitude of consumers in a more
  genuine way
• Blog-watching (C2C blogs)
• Problems involved
• Time consuming
• Identify characteristics of author and readers
  do they match the market
• Identify how influencial specific blogs are

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Further readings

• Belch Belch (2001) Advertising Promotion. An
  Integrated Marketing Communication Perspective.
  McGraw-Hill
• Henning-Thureau et al.(2004) Electronic word of
  mouth via consumer-opinion platforms. Journal of
  Interactive Marketing, 18, 1, pp.38-52.
• Morgan Pritchard (2001) Advertising in Tourism
  Leisure. Butterworth Heinemann.
• Myers G. (1994) Words in Ads. Edward Arnold