Public Invitation to MU's first PhD Dissertation Defense - Lidija Lalicic, Department of Tourism and Service Management

The entire MU Community is cordially invited to attend MU’s first doctoral-level defense. 

The event is open to all members of the public.  Mark your calendars, and please come out to show your support!

PhD Dissertation Defense

Candidate: Lidija Lalicic

Department:  Tourism and Service Management

Thesis Title:   Innovation Opportunities for the Tourism Industry Enhanced by Social Media

Date of Defense:  Thursday, 26 November 2015

When & Where:  12:30pm, MU Library

Supervisor: Dr. Astrid Dickinger

Dissertation Committee Members: Dr. Iis Tussyadiah, Dr. Josef Mazanec, and Dr. Arno Scharl

Excerpt from Lidija's dissertation, submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Business and Socioeconomic Sciences in the Department of Tourism and Service Management in the Post-Graduate School of MODUL University Vienna:

The main aim of this dissertation is to provide an understanding of the usability of social media spaces for tourism marketers, but also to understand how tourism marketers can benefit from it and innovate their existing products and/or services. Through the use of a three-paper design, this dissertation takes an interdisciplinary approach with multiple methods.

The first study, ‘Destination Brand Personality in Social Media Spaces: Opportunities to Innovate the Tourist Experience’, provides marketers with an understanding of how to enhance their absorptive capacity to identify, assimilate and translate the knowledge from social media spaces into their innovation strategies.

The second study, ‘The Role of Creativity in Mobile User Driven Innovative Travel Communities’, integrates the topic of user-driven innovation and mobile computing platforms in tourism. Through a web-based survey among members of a mobile computing travel platform, consumers’ creativity is assessed and analyzed as an effect on user-driven innovative outcomes.

The third study, ‘Open Innovation Platforms in Tourism: A Case Study of a Destination Management Organization’, focuses on the possibility for DMOs to integrate the open innovation paradigm facilitated by social media spaces.

Overall, this dissertation demonstrates how social media can offer a plethora of possibilities to receive valuable information about consumers and their experiences, directly steer consumers’ experience by effective mobile computing platform design, and receive a high number of quality ideas as effective input for innovative strategies for product development and marketing. This dissertation provides an understanding of the usability of social media spaces for marketers. Furthermore, a solid understanding of the benefits of marketers innovating their existing products and/or services based on user-driven recommendations are provided. Generally, the dissertation demonstrates how the dynamics of the internet forces marketers to exploit their resources outside their company borders in order to secure stable growth. Social media can, thus, create fruitful opportunities for practitioners. For research, this dissertation integrates theories from the field of marketing and innovation. This allows a comprehensive understanding of consumers’ behavior in tourism and their interaction with social media. The theories illustrate their applicability to the field of tourism and support the development of theories explaining marketing practices facilitated by consumers in the field of tourism.

Read the full abstract here.