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Partner Choice: Adaptation of Strategic Collaboration Between Travel Agencies

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Journal of Hospitality & Tourism Research: The Professional Journal of the Council on Hotel, Restaurant, and Institutional Education

Published online on

Abstract

Travel agencies seeking to improve their product development performance increasingly engage in collaborative product development with their suppliers. From the perspective of collaboration, the independent travel agent has a future, provided it makes appropriate investment in technology and creates competitive differentiation. The research goals of this study were to investigate how market-focused strategic adaptation among the members of travel agent collaborations affects perceived market performance. Data were obtained via a mailed questionnaire survey of a sample of travel agencies. The model and the hypotheses were tested using a structural equation modeling approach. The findings of this study provide interesting insights for travel agencies interested in partner choice. Customer competence has emerged as an important asset in travel agent collaboration, which can be used to increase the productivities of knowledge works through the management of product and service innovation; different strategies are discussed in terms of different segments of customers within the collaboration.