Market-Oriented Destination Marketing: An Operationalization
Abstract
As competition among destinations has intensified, researchers have increasingly advocated for a market-oriented approach to destination marketing. Unfortunately, the unique stakeholder structure of the destination marketing environment precludes a direct application of the traditional market orientation paradigm to this domain. Accordingly, the purpose of this research is to empirically develop an operational definition of the market orientation construct that can be applied to destination marketing organizations. Based on the tenets of stakeholder theory, this research proposes a multiple-stakeholder view of the marketing concept and develops its attendant operational construct. Referred to herein as a multistakeholder market orientation (MSMO), this construct is proposed and operationalized as reflective of the extent to which a destination marketing organization (DMO) implements the marketing concept across the stakeholder spectrum. The nomological validity of this construct is established by testing the effect of the proposed MSMO construct on DMO performance.