Influences of Market Orientation and Perceived Trust on Innovativeness and Performance in Tourism Networks

In this study the focus is on tourism network cooperation. Specifically, focus is on the influences of trust and market orientation on innovativeness and performance of network cooperation. The view of performance in tourism networks reflects sales, employee and profit growth and factors that motivate future sales growth such as reputation, product development and commercialization success of network cooperation. A broader perspective on performance is important in tourism, since many of the Scandinavian countries and former eastern countries are rather newly established in the tourism industries. Performance also depends upon innovativeness of the enterprises cooperating and innovativeness to hinge on market orientation and trust in networks which may capture the nuances in providing tourism services. The model is theoretically driven and was tested with CFA. A convenience sampling was used to generate responses from Lithuania, Finland and Sweden (n=138). The proposed model received acceptable reliabilities, and dependences variables explain between 12 and 53 % of the variance. This model has implications for theory and practice. It is demonstrated that trust and market orientation complement each other as relatively nascent tourism businesses develop their services and performance. This is part of Experience Stratos 2007-2017 research programme studies.