Barriers affecting organisational adoption of higher order customer engagement in tourism service interactions

This paper uses a qualitative research methodology with the purpose of:
• Examining consumer engagement from a service-dominant logic perspective.
• Identifying barriers to successfully engaging customers.
• Exposing the type of barriers ranging from strategic, consumer, technological and management structure & culture.
• Building on the limited literature on consumer engagement.

In this study, consumer engagement was examined from a service-dominant logic perspective in tourism service interactions. Extensive field interviews and focus groups in the context of three upscale hotels in Hong Kong identified numerous barriers towards successfully engaging consumers, extending from consumer, technological, and strategic cases to organisational cases. In all, a firm's overall strategy, organisational structure and culture are the most important barriers determining whether consumer engagement as depicted in the literature can be successfully deployed within hotel organisations. Implications call for a more intensive study of engaging consumers from an organisational context with a reassessment of progressive stages that include leadership interventions and the incorporation of consumer feedback at all stages of the firm's value-creating network.