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3. Research Method
3.1 Case Study
The current study focuses on how Taiwanese government promotes its tourism worldwide and how these promotions are integrated during “Tour Taiwan Years 2008-2009.” Based on the literature review, the past researches on tourism destination brand, such as New Zealand, Scotland, and United Kingdom, were mainly conducted by means of case study research. These studies analyzed a specific country as a case within a period of time frame or a specific campaign and examined its branding process, strategy, and promotions through multiple sources. In addition, Yin (1994) also pointed out that case study is preferable when the research questions are “how”
and “why,” which is exactly the focus of this study—how Taiwan is portrayed and how these promotions are coordinated across countries. Therefore, this study employs case study as the research method.
Yin (1994) defined case study as “an empirical inquiry that investigates a contemporary phenomenon within its real-life context and in which multiple sources of evidence are used,” including documentation, archival records, interviews, direct observation, participant-observation, physical artifact. Besides, based on the IMC audit proposed by Duncan (2002), to understand the extent to which an organization coordinates and integrates its marketing strategy and execution, two main methods are used—on-site interview and content analysis. An important element in IMC audit is gap analysis, which intends to compare what is actually being done (through content analysis) and what is said to be done (through in-depth interview).Therefore, these two methods are used in this case study and in the following section more details about the two methods are illustrated.
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3.2 Case study: Data Collection
3.2.1 Research Scope: Tour Taiwan Years 2008-2009
In succession to the “Doubling Tourist Arrivals Plan” (2002-2008) and in conjunction with the first three-year phase of “2015 Economic Development Plan,”
(2007-2009), Taiwan Tourism Bureau launched the two-year campaign, “Tour Taiwan Years 2008-2009,” to help achieve the goal of 4 million and 4.25 million tourist arrivals in 2008 and 2009, respectively.
“Tour Taiwan Years 2008-2009” consists of five sub-plans, including” 1) domestic promotion; 2) festival and competition; 3) product development; 4) international publicity and promotion; and 5) travel service network establishment.
Since the present study tries to know how Taiwan’s tourism is promoted worldwide and how these promotions are integrated, the focus is on the international promotions, especially the fourth sub-plan. According to the work plan of “Tour Taiwan Years 2008-2009,”the image building and marketing strategies are developed based on the three main target regions of Taiwan—Northeast Asia (Japan and Korea), Southeast Asia (Hong Kong, Singapore, Malaysia), and the West (Europe and America).
Therefore, any promotional materials for the three regions during 2008-2009 are collected for analysis.
3.2.2 In-depth Interview
Since the focus of this study is on how Taiwan is promoted internationally, people in “International Affairs Division” in Taiwan Tourism Bureau are the interviewees.
International Affairs Division consists of three departments set up based on three main target markets—1) Japan and Korea; 2) Hong Kong, Singapore, and Malaysia; 3) Europe and North America. Each department is responsible for the promotions in its target market and develops different marketing objectives and strategies according to
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the features of each market. Therefore, the researcher plans to interview one person from each section to understand 1) the core value, image, and positioning of Taiwan tourism brand as well as the mission in Tour Taiwan Years 2008-2009; and 2) how they develop the marketing strategy and exercise all the marketing communication tools. In addition to the three interviewees, the researcher also plans to interview the chief who is in charge of the overall tourism marketing to further understand how regional promotions are coordinated and integrated. The following is the list of interviewees:
Table 3.1 Introductions of Interviewees
Name Title/ Position Time and place
Li-Hsing, Lai Assistant Director-General, International Affairs Division
Telephone Interview, 40 minutes, 2009/06/09 Shih-Kuei, Liu Section Chief (Northeast Asia),
International Affairs Division
Telephone Interview, 10 minutes, 2009/06/19 Ying-Hui, Cheng Section Chief (Europe &America),
International Affairs Division
Telephone Interview, 10 minutes, 2009/06/19
Since the Section Chief of Southeast Asia is not available for interview because of personal issue, only three interviews are conducted. Besides, telephone interview is adopted due to the heavy work in Tourism Bureau. The whole process is completed by ways of semi-structure interview. For the outline of the interview questions, please see the appendix 4.
3.2.3 Data Analysis
As mentioned earlier, all materials related to “Tour Taiwan Years 2008-2009,”
especially those with focus on international publicity and promotion, are collected for analysis. Specifically, these materials include tourism brochures, advertisements,
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governmental reports, news release and so on. Following the GIMC model, these materials are thus mainly categorized into four parts based on four marketing communication tools—advertising, public relations, sales promotions, and direct marketing— to see how they are coordinated.
In addition, the official websites of Tourism Bureau are also examined due to the importance of the Internet on tourism marketing. The former studies revealed that it is impossible for destination marketers to overlook the Internet in their marketing mix because it provides economical global accessibility, conveniences for updating, real-time information services, interactive communications features and unique customization capabilities (Cai et al., 2004). It is obvious that the special features of the Internet make the websites of Tourism Bureau important contact points for
prospect tourists. Thus, the websites of Tourism Bureau in different language versions are also included in the analysis.
In order to judge which type of GIMC Tourism Bureau employs to promote Taiwan, this study views “strategic consistency” as the criterion instead of
“executional consistency” to decide whether the promotions are globally integrated.
As pointed out in chapter 2, here strategy means “message strategy,” in which the brand image and core value revealed is the focus for examining the GIMC strategy.
Since Tourism Bureau develops specific marketing strategies for three main market segmentations during this campaign, the evaluation process goes like this: 1) the strategies of all four marketing communication tools in each country are examined first (i.e. vertical integration); 2) the strategies of all marketing communication tools across countries within each region are thus compared (i.e. horizontal integration); 3) the strategies of all marketing communication tools across three regions are compared together (i.e. horizontal integration). Again, the brand image conveyed from the marketing communications is the criterion for examining whether the whole campaign
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To summarize, the present study, on one hand, uses in-depth interview to figure out the core value of Taiwan tourism brand as well as its positioning and image during
“Tour Taiwan Years 2008-2009.” On the other hand, the data analysis provides the evidence of what Tourism Bureau has accomplished. Together the interview and the data analysis give us a clearer understanding of how Taiwan promotes its tourism image worldwide with different marketing tools. The following figure shows a brief framework of this research:
Case Study of Taiwan Tourism Brand From GIMC across countries
Discussion
Conclusion and Suggestion Figure 3.1 Research Framework
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