Ethical Marketing Model for Luxury Hotel Chains: Development and Validation of a Performance Evaluation Tool

Abstract

The aim of this study is to develop a new performance evaluation tool that is stringently applied to the hotel chains, considering the associated ethical marketing dimensions to measure its proper strategic, tactical, and operational role and impact within hospitality marketing management plans, campaigns, and strategies implemented. A Delphi technique was conducted as the selected research qualitative method, comprising three rounds. A total of 23 panel participants, such as directors and managers of marketing, e-commerce, sales, and branding, completed all three rounds. Two major areas of ethical marketing, internal and external, both divided into five dimensions, each with underlying items, were found to comprise the ethical marketing model for luxury hotel chains: (1) internal area of marketing (with five dimensions: integration, training, equal opportunities, performance evaluation, and smart policies) and (2) external area of marketing (with five dimensions: stakeholders, booking platforms and CRM, marketing plan, digital marketing campaigns, and social media platforms). The study concludes with useful insights and remarks. The generalisability of the results may be limited owning to the partial or not full applicability across all luxury hotel chains. The model still needs to be empirically applied in luxury hotel chains to enrich its robustness, covering a wider spread of four- and five-star luxury hotels. There is a growing potential for researchers, hotel decision makers, and marketing and sales managers and directors to achieve many advantages and benefits from the proposed model, supporting the efforts for ethical marketing theory and practice, such as hotel brand positioning strategies and formulation of more targeted and finely tuned ethical marketing strategies, tactics, and plans. This is the first study to develop and validate a performance evaluation tool of ethical marketing for luxury hotel chains. This pioneering approach extends the scope into ethical marketing because this model has never been used in this area.