EHS Hotels: Neuroimaging or Self-Reports When Evaluating Tourism Advertising and Websites?

The growth of e-commerce and new digital methods of payment has ushered in unexpected repercussions on many companies throughout the world. The hotel chain EHS is an example. An increase in competition resulting from the digitalization of hotel bookings has led to a 5% reduction in its net sales in 2019. To address this situation, EHS’s CEO charged the chain’s marketing department with two tasks in 2020: develop an effective advertising campaign and design a website to foster online bookings. The current case study describes the characteristics of two very different marketing agencies engaged by the marketing department to analyze the hotel’s advertising and web design: (i) Idith, a company basing its findings on self-reported data (questionnaires or surveys), and (ii) Neuronsy, a firm which resorts to neuroimaging and psychology (eye-tracking or functional magnetic resonance imaging). Based on this, students should advise the EHS marketingMarketing department as to which marketing agency to engage to assist in the design of the most trustworthy and effective advertising and website strategies. To help students achieve this, the case study discusses the advantages and drawbacks, the price, the utility, the methodology and the nature of data captured by the two methods, which all need to be considered for evaluating and deciding on which option and marketing consulting agency to use.