processes in different firms and the underlying technology that enables collaboration among these firms to facilitate transactions and the sharing of information should be studied.
Finally, with regard to partner readiness, our findings highlighted that the greater the perception of usefulness and ease of use of technology, the greater the propensity to embrace technology by the partners involved. The technology readiness index
(Parasuraman, 2000), a key factor in adopting and embracing technologically innovative products and services, indicates the same result. In the case of OV, the successful hotels expressed optimism (the degree to which one believes that the technology offers increased control, flexibility, and efficiency) to OV, while the
unsuccessful hotels (e.g., U2) showed insecurity (distrust of technology) by indicating that using the technology helps very little. Therefore, for a firm to take advantage of the IT-enabled value co-created, the employees have to be technology ready, which means that they need to understand the benefits delivered by the technology and be willing to act as a technology pioneer. Based on our results, we can assert that managers should find ways to implement the key factors highlighted in this paper to enhance the
realization of the value co-created in inter-firm relationships. One core factor is the development of partner readiness. Managers should take advantage of partnership opportunities in which customer and partner relations are accomplished online.
This chapter has presented an exploratory study into how information technology may play a central role in terms of co-creation value within an inter-organizational context. The evidence from the 13 interviews suggested that the factors (strategic fit, synergy, process alignment, partner readiness) presented in this article are the elements enabling the co-creation value and are likely to be of interest to the researcher dealing with these issues. This study also has its limitations. The first limitation is related to the research context. The qualitative and empirical data analysis was undertaken with data collected from a single tourist service provider and its partner organizations. To further foster the multidisciplinary debate yet maintain a link with practice, future researchers may want to explore the gathering of data from the entire tourist industry sector and partner organizations and to consider other service sectors or cross-service industry collaborations, as well as those organizations for which collaboration is pivotal to success. This may also include additional data collection from the travellers’ side. This further research could improve or expand our finding in several ways.
Acknowledgements
Financial support from the Regional Law 7 August 2007, n., 41 “Promozione della ricerca scientifica e dell’innovazione tecnologica in Sardegna” is gratefully
acknowledged.
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© Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2016
Roman Egger, Igor Gula and Dominik Walcher (eds.), Open Tourism, Tourism on the Verge, DOI 10.1007/978-3-642-54089-9_5
(1)
Open Source Marketing in Tourism:
Motivational Drivers and Practical Approaches
Klaus-Peter Wiedmann
1and Sascha Langner
1Leibniz University of Hannover, Hannover, Germany
Klaus-Peter Wiedmann
Email: wiedmann@m2.uni-hannover.de Sascha Langner (Corresponding author) Email: langner@m2.uni-hannover.de
Keywords Open source networks – Open source marketing – Motivation
1 Introduction
The Internet and its possibilities for interaction have a profound impact on consumer behavior. Initially driven by an information- and transaction-related focus, the World Wide Web increasingly reveals its true strength: social networking between individuals and organizations. The creation of communities is expanding, forums and weblogs are gaining considerable attention, and digital versions of social networks, such as
Facebook.com, are maintaining billions of registered users. In the tourism sector, the networking of consumers is booming. Millions of people use and appreciate
communities to make travel arrangements, including the exchange of feedback on platforms such as Tripadvisor.com and Oyster.com, or communities to plan and organize individual and group travel, such as Couchsurfing.com, Triporama.com, Globalzoo.de, Trippy.com, or Gogobot.com.
In the course of this development, network-related marketing has received growing attention in the tourism sector. A central question emerges: How can we effectively market products and services with the help of communities? In particular, how can the enormous marketing potential of thousands of community members be usefully
integrated into the traditional marketing of tourism companies?
A promising approach is found in the “veterans” of social interaction on the Internet, the open source networks. Founded as a counterpart to classical software engineering (e.g., Windows vs. Linux or Internet Explorer vs. Firefox), these
communities began the early implementation of collaborative development projects.
Furthermore, the marketing of community results is organized and implemented collectively in open source networks with remarkable success.
The browser Firefox, which was marketed only with community funds, has displaced Microsoft’s long-time number-one browser, Internet Explorer, in browser rankings. Similarly, the independent third-party operating system Linux has become a global brand. The collaborative marketing approach of free communities is generally referred to as “open source marketing”. Contrary to what one might expect, this form of marketing, which is based on the ideals of the open source movement, is suitable for many areas of commercial businesses as well as non-profit projects.
In this context, and with particular attention to research on motivation in open source communities in general and open source-marketing projects in particular, this article aims to present interesting approaches to open source-oriented marketing in the tourism market. Why do consumers participate in marketing-oriented open source networks? On which network characteristics is individual participation based? What are the underlying causes and motivational drivers that companies can specifically address to motivate consumers toward voluntary participation in marketing processes?