Relationships and networks as the core for a new approach to marketing in the tourism sector

The main objective of this research is to characterize the main patterns about the corporate culture of the Spanish hotel firms with a more relational approach in its marketing practices. Although many authors defend that the corporate culture of a firm has an extraordinary impact on the success of a relationship marketing strategy, (Heskett, 1987; Webster, 1988; Reichheld & Sasser, 1990; Hunt & Morgan, 1994; Morgan & Hunt, 1994; Palmer, 1996; Buttle, 1996b; Gronroos, 1997a; Gummesson, 1997; Piercy, 1998; Coviello & Brodie, 1998; Ahmad & Buttle, 2002) there are no studies about the main features of the corporate culture of the relational firms. Among the diverse existing qualitative methods, case study has been selected as the option, that best fits the objective of this research. According to Yin (1994) a case study is ¿an empirical inquiry that investigates a real life phenomenon within its real life context¿. Case studies will be conducted following the grounded theory approach. The study of different hotel companies, with different relational orientations to their markets, will make possible to establish links between these companies and to reach conclusions about the main similarities and peculiarities of their respective corporative cultures. Companies in the purposive sample will be selected according to an adaptation of a questionnaire developed by Coviello et al. (2002), that measures the relationship marketing orientation of any firm. Questions using a seven-point Likert scale measure each of the four possible relationship marketing approaches; transaction marketing, database marketing, interaction marketing and network marketing; presented by Coviello et al. (1997). The theoretical saturation criterion will be used to decide when to stop the field work (Glaser and Strauss, 1967). Theoretical saturation occurs when additional interviews and analysis no longer contribute to develop and link the exiting categories or do not discover new ones (Strauss, 1987). When arrived to that stage, memos will be grouped to generate a theory. The final objective will be to determine the corporate culture that characterizes the Spanish hotel firms with a relationship marketing approach to their markets.