Using TOC to develop U-tourism and to formulate its marketing strategy

Abstract

The progress of information and telecommunication technology (ICT) has accelerated the arrival of an 'Ubiquitous Society', where information can be received and exchanged anytime and anywhere. The transformation of commerce comes from brick and mortar stores to electronic commerce and to mobile commerce, now we call 'ubiquitous commerce' (U-commerce). U-commerce implies ubiquity, universality, uniqueness and unison, and brings lots of new challenges to marketers. Meanwhile, ICTs also provide new opportunities to tourism industry, and its food and beverage sector. Therefore, this study uses theory of constraint (hereafter TOC) to identify the existing challenges of tourism industry in Taiwan and provide the possible solutions of utilising ICTs properly. Then construct the U-tourism and formulate its corresponding marketing strategies. Hence, the results of this study could be divided into three major parts: 1) identifying tourist's demand and corresponding ICTs by questionnaires; 2) through TOC to map Taiwan's tourism challenges with possible solutions; 3) formulating new marketing strategies for U-tourism with U-space as the infrastructure.