Perceptions of New Technological Tools by Marketing Professionals: Experiences in Hotel Business

Abstract

The world is facing a tremendous transition to the digital world. Marketing professionals handle a wide range of topics and information through various funnels. Finding unique and effective tools and using those tools demands the strong ability of marketing teams. Tourism has grown to be a key contributor to the economies of many countries. It is now at the heart of the tough competition in international travel to draw more tourists and boost profits through adaptation and resilience to the shifting demand structure and global conditions of today (Altinay & Kozak, 2021; Buhalis, 2000; Dwyer & Kim, 2003; Heath, 2003; Kozak , 2004; Ritchie 2003; Ritchie & Geoffrey, 2003). This study aimed to investigate the relationship between perceptions of marketing professionals' data driven marketing capabilities in the hospitality industry by looking at the relationship between technological orientation and competitive advantage. The literature shows that the development of digitalized services for their guest was made possible by the rise of smart technologies (Altinay & Kozak, 2021; Belanche, et.al., 2020; Del Chiappa & Baggio, 2015; Gretzel, et.al., 2020; Kontogianni & Alepis, 2020; Wang & Li, 2013). The previous studies also focused on the organizational development side of internal capabilities and their enhancement. However, this study aims to gain valuable insights into marketing professionals' behaviors in island tourism destination hotels. According to our literature review, we found that there is still tiny and promising research about it, and it is interesting to explore the impact of technological orientation and organizational learning on competition on the island. The literature review showed that there are still limited studies to understand measuring the efficiency of functions of collected data from new technologies such as using automation systems; Augmented Reality (AR), Artificial Intelligence (AI) for marketing strategies (Al Adwan, 2023; Hoffman, et. al., 2022; Saydam, et. al., 2022) Additionally issue on new technologies in marketing presents a wide rang of research that explores how new technologies influence marketing practice and how marketin scholars and practitioners can remain relevant in the context of rapid developments of new technology can stimulate furtrue research (Hoffman, et. al., 2022)Organizational learning (OL) helps an organization to achieve high performance and strategy renewal helping an organization to achieve high performance and strategy renewal. It helps people to become more competent and self-assured which expands the capacity for learning (Sahin, 2021) Organizational learning theory suggests that an organization's productivity depends on the growth of its knowledge base, which is facilitated by its ability to learn (Orego & Wainaina, 2019). Our main research question of the paper is how the usage and selected data of new technological tools affects the organizational performance of tourism sector in terms of marketing capabilities. To provide a theoretical foundation and the link between the variables hypotheses as follows: H1. OL positively related to marketing capability. H2. OL is positively related to competitive advantage. H3: Marketing Capability is positively related to competitive advantage. H4a: Technology Orientation has a positive impact on marketing capability. H4b: Technology Orientation has a positive impact on competitive advantage. H5a: Technology Orientation moderates the positive relationship between organizational learning and marketing capability, which gets stronger when technology orientation is inclined rather than declining. H5b: Technology Orientation moderates the positive relationship between marketing capability and competitive advantage, which gets stronger when technology orientation is inclined rather than declining. In our research methodology we shall conduct purposive sampling method to send 400 questionnaires. Confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) will be performed to assess the measures’ validity and reliability (Chen et al., 2018). The data is going to be analyzed through SPSS to be able to analyze the findings. The hypothesized moderated mediation model will be tested using the Smart PLS software. By understanding the collected data, one of the results shall reveal that a challenging amount of information around competitive advantage and mastering those challenges is related to the organizational learning capability of hotel marketing staff. Further, by understanding the relationships we will demonstrate that technology plays an important role in sustaining competitive advantage. Besides, the technological skills enhancement level of marketers we will identify a digital mindset followed by a strong ability to organize multi-coping competencies and the correlation between marketing data usage skills and its effects on competitiveness.