Experiential tourism – role and application of micro-targeting in enhancing customer experience, engagement and loyalty

Abstract Micro-Targeting has emerged as preferred marketing and branding strategy in the travel and tourism sector across the world. This strategic marketing approach essentially leverages the deep consumer insights in order to design and develop personalised marketing content and recommendations. The digital technologies like Artificial Intelligence (AI), big data analytics, Machine Learning (ML), Augmented Reality (AR), and Virtual Reality etc. are helping the brands in this sector to predict the taste, preferences, priorities, and overall buying behaviour of their target audience. These valuable insights are subsequently utilised for influencing these prospects through hyper-targeted content and advertising. The overarching objective of this research study is to understand the effectiveness of micro-targeting for creating desired customer experience and subsequently its impact on the brand preference and purchase intention. Novelty of this study is reflected in its focus, which is on understanding the role micro-targeting can play in marketing and branding of offerings in experiential tourism category. It was observed that micro-targeting helps companies/brands to create personalised customer experience across different touch-points during the buying process of the high involvement offerings like experiential travel and tourism services.