eEnabled internet distribution for small and medium sized hotels: the case of hospitality SMEs in Athens

Advances in information and communications technologies (ICTs) have strategic implications for a wide range of industries. Tourism and hospitality have dramatically changed by the ICTs and the Internet and gradually emerge as the leading industry on online expenditure. The Internet revolutionised traditional distribution models, enabled new entries propelled both disintermediation and reintermediation and altered the sources of competitive advantage. This paper explores the strategic implications of ICTs and the perceived advantages and disadvantages of Internet distribution for small and medium-sized hospitality enterprises (SMEs). Primary research in Athens hotels demonstrates the effects of the Internet and ICTs for secondary markets, where there is lower penetration and ICT adoption. Interviews and questionnaires identified a number of strategies in order to optimise distribution. The analysis illustrates the strategic role of ICTs and the Internet for hospitality organisations and Small and Medium-sized organisations in general. Most hotels employ a distribution mix that determines the level and employment of the Internet. The paper demonstrates that only organisations that use ICTs strategically will be able to develop their electronic distribution and achieve competitive advantages in the future

Progress in information technology and tourism management: 20 years on and 10 years after the Internet—The state of eTourism research

This paper reviews the published articles on eTourism in the past 20 years. Using a wide variety of sources, mainly in the tourism literature, this paper comprehensively reviews and analyzes prior studies in the context of Internet applications to Tourism. The paper also projects future developments in eTourism and demonstrates critical changes that will influence the tourism industry structure. A major contribution of this paper is its overview of the research and development efforts that have been endeavoured in the field, and the challenges that tourism researchers are, and will be, facing

The Human Capital “Impact” on E-Business: The Case of Encyclopedia Britannica

[Excerpt] The term “New Economy” has been coined to describe the remarkable economic performance of the 1990s. Stiroh, (1999) an economist at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York observes that its defining characteristic is a “focus on increasing globalization and expanding information technology” (pg. 87). Research suggests that revenues from electronic based business to business trade will double over the next five years from $43 billion in 1998 to$1.3 trillion in 2003. Revenues from business to consumer trade are predicted to rise from $8 billion to$108 billion over the same time period (Forrester Research, 1998). However, there is increasing attention to the challenges facing business in the new economy, and an increasing chorus of analysts suggesting how tenuous many of these business models really are. A recent Barron’s article showed that many dot-com companies have only days of remaining cash (Willoughby, March 20, 1999). Such a key emerging phenomenon has not escaped the attention of writers, though the existing body of writing has some important gaps. We would classify existing e-business literature into two groups. First, there is a growing body of literature that discusses the how the Internet is transforming business models and organizational strategies. A second, much smaller body of work has focused on e-HR, or more specifically, the implications of the Internet on various HR practices

E-strategy in the UK retail grocery sector

After a decade of Internet trading, retailers in the UK have experienced mixed fortunes with their Internet-based ventures. Online shopping success stories include; Tesco’s, which has positioned itself as a world leader in online grocery retailing by providing an Internet-based home delivery of over 40,000 products and making the service available to almost 95 per cent of UK residents. Similarly, Sainsbury’s offers 71% per cent of UK residents the opportunity to shop online however the company does not have the same international recognition. Waitrose too has expanded its Internet-based shopping services, aided by its acquisitions in OCADO. By contrast, Somerfield, and more recently Iceland have stopped their Internet shopping operations due to poor trading results and economic difficulties, despite the fact that Iceland was the first grocery retailer to offer online shopping to the majority of the UK mainland. The key aims of this paper are to explore how major grocery retailers coming to the one line market; to consider why some are more successful than others and to develop an understanding of the role of strategic thinking in online retailing. More specifically, the paper will initially, investigate the strategic options open to retailers developing activities online and finally, discuss the extent to which e-strategies represent a long-term approach to planning. The paper presents a literature review, which provides the conceptual foundations for investigation of the significance of e-strategy development within retailing. This model is then compared with evidence from secondary data sources and business results from leading UK grocery retailers in order to debate and analyse the likely importance of e-strategies in the success of online grocery retailing in the UK

Dynamic Organizations: Achieving Marketplace Agility Through Workforce Scalability

Dynamic organizations (DOs) operate in business environments characterized by frequent and discontinuous change, They compete on the basis of marketplace agility; that is on their ability to generate a steady stream of both large and small innovations in products, services, solutions, business models, and even internal processes that enable them to leapfrog and outmaneuver current and would-be competitors and thus eke out a series of temporary competitive advantages that might, with luck, add up to sustained success over time. Marketplace agility requires the ongoing reallocation of resources, including human resources. We use the term workforce scalability to capture the capacity of an organization to keep its human resources aligned with business needs by transitioning quickly and easily from one human resource configuration to another and another, ad infinitum. We argue that marketplace agility is enhanced by workforce agility because it is likely to meet the four necessary and sufficient conditions postulated by the resource based view (RBV) of the firm – valuable, rare, inimitable, and non-substitutable – if it can be attained. Our analysis therefore concludes by focusing on the two dimensions of workforce scalability – alignment and fluidity – and postulating a number of principles that might be used to guide the design of an HR strategy that enhances both. Throughout the paper, key concepts are illustrated using the experiences of Google, the well-known Internet search firm. Because the analysis is speculative and intended primarily to pique the interest of researchers and practitioners, the paper ends with a number of important questions that remain to be clarified

Information Outlook, April 2001

Volume 5, Issue 4https://scholarworks.sjsu.edu/sla_io_2001/1003/thumbnail.jp

Maximizing Research Impact Through Institutional and National Open-Access Self-Archiving Mandates

No research institution can afford all the journals its researchers may need, so all articles are losing research impact (usage and citations). Articles made “Open Access,” (OA) by self-archiving them on the web are cited twice as much, but only 15% of articles are being spontaneously self-archived. The only institutions approaching 100% self-archiving are those that mandate it. Surveys show that 95% of authors will comply with a self-archiving mandate; the actual expe-rience of institutions with mandates has confirmed this. What institutions and funders need to mandate is that (1) immediately upon acceptance for publication, (2) the author’s final draft must be (3) deposited into the Institutional Repository. Only the depositing needs to be mandated; set-ting access privileges to the full-text as either OA or Restricted Access (RA) can be left up to the author. For articles published in the 93% of journals that have already endorsed self-archiving, access can be set as OA immediately; for the remaining 7%, authors can email the eprint in re-sponse to individual email requests automatically forwarded by the Repository

Maximizing research impact through institutional and national open-access self-archiving mandates

No research institution can afford all the journals its researchers may need, so all articles are losing research impact (usage and citations). Articles made “Open Access,” (OA) by self-archiving them on the web are cited twice as much, but only 15% of articles are being spontaneously self-archived. The only institutions approaching 100% self-archiving are those that mandate it. Surveys show that 95% of authors will comply with a self-archiving mandate; the actual experience of institutions with mandates has confirmed this. What institutions and funders need to mandate is that (1) immediately upon acceptance for publication, (2) the author’s final draft must be (3) deposited into the Institutional Repository. Only the depositing needs to be mandated; setting access privileges to the full-text as either OA or Restricted Access (RA) can be left up to the author. For articles published in the 93% of journals that have already endorsed self-archiving, access can be set as OA immediately; for the remaining 7%, authors can email the eprint in response to individual email requests automatically forwarded by the Repository

The 4s web-marketing mix model

This paper reviews the criticism on the 4Ps Marketing Mix framework, the most popular tool of traditional marketing management, and categorizes the main objections of using the model as the foundation of physical marketing. It argues that applying the traditional approach, based on the 4Ps paradigm, is also a poor choice in the case of virtual marketing and identifies two main limitations of the framework in online environments: the drastically diminished role of the Ps and the lack of any strategic elements in the model. Next to identifying the critical factors of the Web marketing, the paper argues that the basis for successful E-Commerce is the full integration of the virtual activities into the company’s physical strategy, marketing plan and organisational processes. The four S elements of the Web-Marketing Mix framework present a sound and functional conceptual basis for designing, developing and commercialising Business-to-Consumer online projects. The model was originally developed for educational purposes and has been tested and refined by means of field projects; two of them are presented as case studies in the paper.\ud \u

Information Outlook, June 1997

Volume 1, Issue 6https://scholarworks.sjsu.edu/sla_io_1997/1005/thumbnail.jp