Abstract
Nowadays, there is a new area of Marketing named Marketing 4.0 where technology and digitalization have leveraged consumers to be part of companies, participating in the innovation and development of products and services through value co-creation activities. Especially, social media have an impact on the Tourism industry. Tourism activities are considered as a huge network of agents co-creating experiences. Every day, thousands of travelers and tourists create multimedia content, share comments and upload their photographs, videos, and suggestions. They share their experiences in a destination, using social media. Consequently, companies must respond to these comments and ideas in order to create a positive image of the tourist company. It is about to co-create tourist products and services in a collaborative way peer-to-peer between consumers and companies and motivate and inspire other travelers to visit the tourist destination.
TopBackground
In the past half century, Marketing has been through some different stages until reaching the most current era of Marketing, Marketing 4.0. As Erragcha and Romdhane (2014, p.137) posit “Marketing is a discipline in constant change”.
The first focus of Marketing is Marketing 1.0 and appeared after the Industrial Revolution due to the development of production (Kotler, 2012). It is a commercial approach to unidirectional management using traditional media (radio, press, television). In this era, the consumer is a passive user and the product is the focal point for the company (Erragcha and Romdhane, 2014). With reference to the tourism sector, a clear example of Marketing 1.0 is tourist brochures, which inspire consumers to choose the destination through photographs of monuments, places of interest and hotels.
Contrary to Marketing 1.0 only focused on the product, Marketing 2.0 places the customer in the middle of its vision (Kotler, Kartajaya and Setiawan, 2010). This is the result of the development of information technology and the Internet (Kotler et al., 2010). This is a new challenge faced by companies that must take advantage of social networks to reach customers directly and individually. In this new era, customers are well informed, can easily compare offers of similar products and choose between a set of functional and alternative features. In fact, each consumer has different preferences, so companies must segment and develop a superior product for a target audience (Kotler et al., 2010). Although companies begin to “touch” the heart and mind of consumers, even in Marketing 2.0, consumers are passive Marketing objects (Kotler et al., 2010).
Key Terms in this Chapter
Marketing 4.0: New area of Marketing where technology and digitalization have leveraged consumers to be part of companies, participating in the innovation and development of products and services through value co-creation activities.
Value Co-Creation: Collaboration and creative process between the company, consumers and other interest groups based on the interaction, and through which companies develop new products and services.
Internet Technologies: Application of technologies and Internet-based communication and information tools to get, store and send data in the business context.
Marketing 1.0: The first focus of Marketing which consumer is considered as a passive user and the product is the focal point for the company.
Marketing 2.0: The second era of Marketing based on social networking sites which consumer is the focal point for the company.
Big Data Marketing: Set of tools and technological techniques based on the process of large amounts of information in real time, that allow a company to know consumer behaviors and attitudes in the purchase process.
Marketing 3.0: It’s the era of Marketing that considers consumers as people with heart, mind and spirit. Marketing 3.0 appears due to factors such as globalization, creativity and the technology development.