Market Knowledge Exploration. Initial Empirical Evidence on Hotel Chains

Value creation is closely associated with knowledge management. Today the emergence of Internet-based social media is having a fundamental impact on knowledge generation. But are firms aware of this phenomenon? How could they draw knowledge from the digital context? Our paper explores these aspects through a quantitative approach, focusing on hotel chains operating in Italy. Data collection was performed through data source triangulation: an online questionnaire (administered to hotel chain managers), and web-based research (e.g. we examined hotel chain websites and their profiles on social media). Data analysis relied principally on cluster analysis, which allowed us to group hotel chains on the basis of their differing propensity to draw knowledge from the web. In terms of the contribution of this study, we focus on knowledge generation in hotel chains through Web 2.0, a relatively unexplored topic. Moreover, by applying cluster analysis, we highlight groups of hotel chains operating in Italy distinguished by their approach to drawing knowledge from the web. On one hand, their behaviour seems random, while on the other hand their web-mediated knowledge appears to be efficiently organized as a logical process of aligning their presence on different social networks. These practical implications should be explored in further research, focusing on different strategic approaches to the digital environment.