Developing a Qualitative Model for Integrated Marketing Communication in Travel Agencies

In today's competitive environment, companies have to use a variety of new communication methods to maintain profitable relationships with their customers. Therefore, this cross-sectional study which was based on the principles of interpretivism (social constructivism), sought to develop a paradigm model for integrated marketing communication in travel agencies and tourism offices using grounded theory. The study period lasted from the beginning of 2020 to June 2020 and used interviews for collecting the required data. To this end, 12 detailed non-structured interviews were conducted on scientific-practical experts, including job experts in the tourism industry and university professors using the judgmental method. The collected data were then divided into fifty-two primary codes, fifteen sub-categories, and six core categories according to the open, axial, and selective coding using MAXQDA qualitative data analysis software. The study's results indicated that integrated marketing communications in travel agencies were derived from integrated analysis (causal conditions) and were influenced by contextual requirements (technical-individual), being able to produce the required outputs (purchasing, repurchasing, and creating the integrated marketing communications' recommended value in the travel and tourism industry) for realizing the central phenomenon if suitable strategies are adopted (aligning hardware and software tools in terms of optimal use of advertisement's mixed communication tools). Moreover, the intervening factors were determined by identifying environmental conditions-related categories using the textual data collected from the interviewees. Finally, the selected coding was performed according to the definition of the five assumptions obtained.