1. Introduction
It is argued that ‘the marketing domain is intrinsically one in which collaboration is not just desirable but indispensable’. However, according to the definition made by American Marketing Association (AMA), ‘marketing is an organizational function and a set of processes for creating, communicating and delivering value to customers and for managing customer relationships in ways that benefit the organization and its stakeholders’ (http://www.marketingpower.com). In the definition, collaboration is not mentioned. Hence, why collaboration is not just desirable but indispensable will be discussed and studied in this paper. Here, the author will mainly based on the Tourism Industry and discuss the argument and the relationship between collaboration and marketing. Meanwhile, in order to better understand the related theories in marketing and tourism domain, cases of collaboration in tourism will be cited.
2. Concepts of collaboration and marketing and their relationship
Collaboration in modern business and marketing world refers to two or more parties work together for a shared objective or goal. Collaborative procurement is where the shared objective or goal is related to the procuring of goods and services for the concerned parties. In the marketing domain, collaboration shouldn’t be limited to working with other local authorities but can also include working collaboratively with other public sector organisations is widely recognised as a huge opportunity for delivering cost savings and efficiencies across the public sector. Also, the collaboration in marketing domain includes internal and external collaboration (Larson, 1991; Hamel et al., 1989). The typical approach to collaboration has been to create larger, combined contracts to impr ...