The international marketing management decisions

Case 5c: The international marketing management decisions
of UK Ski tour operators
Angela Roper, University of Surrey
Elin was in the final year of her studies in Marketing Management and had been
considering options for her project for sometime. She was particularly interested in
researching more about issues in International Marketing as she had gained her best
mark in a module on Global Marketing Management. She therefore thought it best to
play to her strengths when choosing her project topic. Whilst she was sure of the
discipline focus of her project she had struggled with thinking of any ideas as to how
she could apply international marketing concepts, and to what, and using what
research method? She talked through these issues with her Personal Tutor, who also
happened to be a very well known marketing scholar. They talked about her
interests, which were varied, although most of them were sports related. Elin waxed
lyrical about her love of skiing, in particular, about the time she spent working in a
French ski resort as a ‘chalet girl’ during most of her gap year before coming to
University. She was now hoping to work for one of the main ski tour operators1 on
graduating. Her Tutor pointed out the obvious solution, why did Elin not combine her
interests in skiing, and ski operators, with the topic of international marketing? Elin
left the meeting very happy, she could envisage now spending her final year
researching something that she was very interested in, had prior knowledge of and a
topic that would be helpful in her career pursuits.
Of course, she still had to find a suitable topic within the International Marketing area.
On reading through her module notes and completed assignments she came across
one of the main academic and practitioner debates in the area, that of whether to
standardise or adapt international marketing practices. Levitt (1983) was the first
main proponent of the expanded debate about standardised global marketing
planning. His underlying message was that well managed international companies
should move their emphasis from customising items to offering globally standardised
products that are advanced, functional, reliable and low priced. Meanwhile, authors
such as Wind (1986) argued the case for the adaptation of marketing in the
realisation that there are strong obstacles to standardisation. The debate is still very
much a contemporary one, as on searching the online databases, Elin found up-todate refereed academic journal articles about marketing standardisation. However,
with the exception of a few studies, there were very few on the international
marketing experiences of service providers. Things were looking up; she had now
found a gap in previous research which her project could potentially fill. In thinking
back to her time as a chalet girl, she remembered that the tour operator she worked
for not only offered skiing packages in a number of countries worldwide, but that they
had operations in other European countries. She had met, for example, their
customers from the UK, Spain, Italy, Portugal and Russia. These tour operators were
obviously becoming major multinationals. Large numbers of people in a number of
markets were buying and experiencing their products and services annually, and
many businesses in ski destinations relied on them for their livelihood. In reviewing
the literature in the tourism field, Elin could find little about the international marketing
management activities of ski tour operators. Once again, she had established an
identifiable gap in previous research. The aim of her project was: ‘To investigate the
international marketing management decisions of UK ski tour operators’. The issue
1
Holloway (1998) defines tour operators as companies, who purchase separate elements of
transport, accommodation and other services, and combine them into a package, which they
then sell directly or indirectly to consumers.
was now to design and implement an appropriate research strategy, in consultation
with her Project Tutor.
Elin decided to use a case study strategy for her dissertation, because on reading a
few research methods textbooks (inherited from her older brother who had completed
a masters’ degree) she thought that her research questions were most suited to be
answered via this strategy. For example, she wanted to know ‘how’ ski tour operators
made decisions about marketing in the countries they operated in and ‘why’ these
decisions and not others. She was directed by her Tutor to read Yin’s (2003) book
Case Study Research. This text seemed to be one of the definitive sources on using
case studies in research. She was particularly struck by his definition of case study
research, which she summarised as:
An empirical enquiry that:

Whilst she had first thought that she could research a sample of operators from the
‘outside’ using secondary data such as company information, industry reports,
financial and marketing press, and marketing literature (such as brochures,
advertising campaigns etc); she realised that she would need to go inside these
organisations in order to really find out how and why decisions were made. In
wanting to know how and why managers and organisations actually do things she
realised she would need to rely on interviews with relevant managers and
employees. Elin was excited by the prospect of going into these companies and
talking to people, this fitted her personality and when previously reading about
research philosophy she had very much identified herself as being more comfortable
with the interpretivist philosophy. In addition, she also realised that she could make
some good contacts in these organisations which might be helpful to her when
applying later for graduate training positions. She had become terribly focused
towards the end of her degree, this was scary really!
In reviewing industry reports on the Tour Operating Industry, Elin found out that of
the six main companies offering ski packages, only four of these were UK-owned.
One of these was quite small and specialised in selling ski packages to school
groups in the UK; she therefore eliminated this from her population as it was not
involved in international marketing activities. This gave her three UK-owned
companies to investigate (one of which was the tour operator she had worked for in
her gap year). Luckily Elin had recently read, for another module, an article which
discussed the results of research into cruise ships and from this she gained some
useful insight into using case studies. The researchers for this study had interviewed
a range of managers at different levels in cruise ship companies and had also
collected internal documents. She could use this example in her meeting with her
project tutor that afternoon, where he was expecting her to outline how she was
going to implement this research design. Elin hoped he would approve of her ideas
as she was really looking forward to going out into the field.
Questions
1. How should Elin justify her choice of a case study research strategy to her Project
Tutor?
2. Gaining and maintaining access to organisations is an important aspect of a case
study research project. What obstacles may Elin encounter when trying to gain
access to these organisations? How should she overcome them?
3. What skills will Elin need when carrying out case study research in these three
companies?
References
Holloway, J.C. (1998) The Business of Tourism, Addison-Wesley Longman, New
York, NY.
Levitt, T. (1983) The Globalization of Markets, Harvard Business Review, May–June,
pp. 62–102.
Wind, Y. (1986) The myth of globalization, Journal of Consumer Marketing, Vol. 3,
pp. 23-26.
Yin, R.K. (2003) Case Study Research: Design and Methods, 3rd edition, Sage,
London.