Introduction
Sustainability has become an essential aspect of an organization’s agenda, and therefore it is being incorporated into the strategic planning processes of an organization. Organization management, therefore, has been forced to adopt regulation strategies so as to protect its brand and ensure a stable supply of goods and services, as well as enhance its performance through sustainability (Han et al., 2019). Coming up with sustainability goals in long-term organization engagements is a way of ensuring long-term value and building public trust for different organizations. Sustainability is often understood as the provision of current needs without compromising the ability of the future generation to meet their own needs. One of the key pillars of sustainability is economic, environmental, and social sustainability. Considering that today’s world resources are being over-exploited, having a sustainability strategy in place allows for long-term investments by the company. Therefore, it is important for corporate leaders to become aware of the need for corporate responsibility and exploit the huge opportunities for growth and success (Abbas et al., 2019). In order to understand the importance of corporate responsibility and sustainability, this analysis evaluates Venice, Italy, as a tourist destination in terms of marketing innovation, sustainability issues facing Venice, and strategies being adopted to preserve Venice as a tourist destination.
Customer Experience Management
The customer experience (CX) is an important component of modern marketing and sales, as many businesses today focus on meeting consumer demands and improving the value to their consumers. As a result, having a CX approach in place and adopting it in the branding processes is critical for marketers (Rahimian et al., 2020). This allows them to differentiate their products and services from those of the competitors and work on making sure that they have a long-term relationship with customers. The customer experience approach uses a wide range of interactions and engagements between the customer and the brand (Homburg et al., 2017). For many organizations, a customer experience can include different issues, such as pre-sale interactions and post-sale interactions. As a result, seeking to ensure that marketers have a customer experience approach in place calls for effective strategies for their marketing and branding to differentiate their service offerings (Witell et al., 2020). There are several areas that these marketers need to focus on in order to ensure that CX is a key approach to branding and marketing.
The first step is to ensure that, as a market, they understand the customer journey. They need to ensure that they identify the different areas in which the brand interacts with the customer and therefore determine the customer’s motivations as well as understand their needs, pain points, and considerations at each stage of their journey (Kandampully et al., 2018). On the other hand, it is important for marketers to make sure that they are consistent in their development of the brand identity. Marketers need to be consistent when it comes to developing a brand identity, and this is reflected in different areas of their understanding (Becker & Jaakkola, 2020). This is in terms of the visual designs of their products, the websites as well as the interactions with customers during customer service. Further, another critical component of customer experience is personalization which involves using the individual preferences of the customers to tailor their interactions and create an engaging and memorable experience. Marketers need to make sure that they practice empathy where they empathize with their customers and understand their needs and areas where they need to be developed so as to ensure that their specific needs are addressed and that the products and services provide an overall better service (Becker & Jaakkola, 2020). In the long term, it is critical to make sure that marketers monitor and improve their customer experiences. This can be achieved through feedback and changes to the service delivery by adhering to the feedback. At the same time, regular reviews and updates of the customer journey are important in ensuring relevance and effectiveness for the long term.
Innovativeness of Marketers in Venice
Being one of the most popular destinations for tourists, millions of people visit the area every year. Therefore, marketers in these areas have been able to adopt innovative and strategic approaches to ensure effectiveness when attracting and retaining customers. For marketers in Venice, visitors are considered to be gold, and therefore one of their main strategies has been using experiential marketing (Flavián et al., 2021). This involves focusing on a wide range of experiences that immerse the visitors through all their five senses. Therefore, some of the evident experiences that have been created by marketers in Venice include walking tours, food experiences, drinking and wine tasting, as well as gondola rides. As a result, visitors are often seeking to engage in the city in a more meaningful manner and create lifetime memories. Marketers in Venice are based on the belief that businesses should be able to have memorable experiences for their customers such that they are able to differentiate themselves from the competitors and, at the same time, boost customer loyalty (Flavián et al., 2021).
Further, in Venice, their marketers have been able to use destination branding as a way of ensuring that they have a unique brand image and the idea of a cool destination for the customers. In Venice, Marketers have created a strong brand image for their visitors. The image created about Venice to the outside world is that they have a rich cultural history, art, and architecture. This is an image that is reinforced through a wide range of marketing communication and advertisement (Cristiano & Gonella, 2020). These strategies are helpful in making sure that many people are attracted to and seeking to visit Venice. This is an important strategy based on the concept of brand image and identity, where marketers need to create a strong image that is consistent throughout different channels, thus boosting brand recognition. Digital marketing has also been an important part of marketing strategies by marketers in Venice (Pesce et al., 2018). This involves using social media, search engines, emails, and other strategies to promote products and services. Venice marketers have worked on ensuring that they have a strong digital presence through social media, where consumers get rich information about Venice as a destination (Cristiano & Gonella, 2020). This illustrates the level of innovativeness of marketers in Venice in their efforts to create sustainable experiences for their visitors. For marketers, they promote travel and environmental conservation of the areas through sustainability measures, promotion of eco-friendliness, and reduction of waste as well as encouraging responsible behaviors. This strategy is critical, especially considering the corporate social responsibility goals and needs of businesses in the market today.
Sustainability Issues Facing Venice
Being a unique tourist attraction city, Venice faces a wide range of sustainability problems which are mainly a result of the cultural history and location of the place. The three main sustainability issues affecting Venice include rising water levels. Venice is located in an area surrounded by a lagoon, with buildings built on islands and connected using bridges (Pasquinelli et al., 2021). The climate crisis has led to an increase in rising water levels, with experts indicating that a possible rise of 50cm in water levels would see the city vanish beneath the waves. Also, Venice has always been vulnerable to regular flooding, which as a result of increased climate changes, has made the problem even worse (van der Borg, 2022). The city now has more severe and frequent floods are being experienced in the areas. As a result, there is a significant threat to the city’s cultural heritage as well as its economic sustainability in the long term (Kandampully et al., 2018). Reports from Venice in 2019 showed that Venice was undergoing some of the worst floods in history, which caused several damages to buildings and infrastructure and a decline in tourism in the area. At the same time, the flooding was affecting the ecosystems of the area, which means that people that live in Venice would not practice fishing practices, as well as affecting the overall tourist experience of the area (van der Borg, 2022). Further, rising water levels in Venice have caused soil erosion which damages the foundations of the buildings and historical landmarks of the city which are likely to cause collapse. Also, the damage to infrastructure in Venice is unprecedented, where roads, bridges, and houses are being affected, making it hard for people to stay or navigate through the city.
Another major sustainability issue facing Venice is over tourism, where millions of visitors visit Venice, which tends to strain the city in terms of infrastructure and resources. One of the problems of over-tourism in Venice is that it results in overcrowding. For instance, in 2019, Venice received 26.2 million visitors in a city that only has a population of 50,000 people (Visentin & Bertocchi, 2019). This has resulted in concerns about Venice’s ability to manage the influx of people and the impact it has on the environment and the infrastructure of the city. On the other hand, the high number of people visiting Venice contributes to high pollution in the city damaging the landmarks and cultural heritage sites. Also, the resources available in the city are subjected to high amounts of pressure and strain, especially in relation to waste management and sanitation.
Another sustainability problem that Venice is dealing with is the issue of waste management and energy consumption. With limited space in Venice, the process of waste disposal and energy consumption is a challenge as the city’s narrow streets do not seem to allow the city to transport the waste out (Du Plessis & De Vries, 2016). This has caused significant issues related to illegal dumping and waste management. On the other hand, the reliance on fossil fuels for power in the city has significantly contributed to gas emissions and climate change in the city (Bertocchi & Camatti, 2022). Therefore, there is an important need to work on transitioning the city towards having more sustainable energy and waste management processes throughout the city. These include the use of solar energy and wind power.
Sustainable Strategies to Adopt in Venice
For the local government, it is important to ensure that resources and other strategies are kept in place to ensure that they protect the city through sustainability. One of the most effective sustainable strategies for the local government in Venice is by adopting sustainable infrastructure throughout the city. This is achieved through making investments in renewable energy sources, adopting water treatment strategies, and even investing in treatment plants as well as public transport systems which reduce the carbon footprint of the city as well as protect the natural resource (Mazzarino & Rubini, 2019). By ensuring that sustainable infrastructure is in place, the local government will gain revenue through sustainable tourism, where people are involved in responsible tourism practices that reduce the damage to the environment and that are beneficial to the local communities (Seraphin et al., 2018). Further, investing in infrastructure allows the government to increase green spaces throughout the city and provide parks that boost the quality of air and areas where people can relax and promote ecosystems for biodiversity (Mazzarino & Rubini, 2019). Also, infrastructural investments boost the waste management practices in the town, thus making sure that waste is reduced, people practice recycling, and the government has in place some compost sites for organic materials.
For local businesses, sustainable use of materials and resources is important. This involves using materials that can be recycled for business operations including the use of biodegradable packaging, recycled containers, and adopting the use of energy-efficient lighting (Kryczka, 2019). The businesses can also achieve this by making sure they source their production materials locally, which can be helpful in boosting the economy of the local people as well as reducing the carbon footprints that come along as a result of various logistics. Further, in terms of the use of resources saving water is an important aspect of business engagement. Businesses in Venice need to be committed to reducing the usage of water by either using water-efficient appliances or adopting low-flow toilets and faucets (Grønholdt et al., 2015). One of the problems that increase pollution in Venice is transportation, especially for the local businesses. Therefore, promoting sustainable use of transportation resources is important in allowing the business to boost the reduction of carbon footprint. On the other hand, customers and employees are able to use sustainable resources and transportation options whenever seeking services from local businesses in Venice (Kryczka, 2019). These strategies allow the local businesses to preserve the natural resources in Venice and minimize their carbon footprint, as well as boost the sustainability of the city for the longer term.
Conclusion
In this analysis, we have evaluated the issue of corporate responsibility and sustainability for businesses. Sustainability is an important consideration for businesses in the market today, which makes it an important part of the overall business management process. Therefore, when marketing, it is important to consider it and promote customer experiences so as to meet the demands of customers in terms of sustainability and long-term success. Ensuring customer experiences in marketing requires understanding the customer journey, being consistent with the brand identity, and practicing empathy with the customers. These enable the marketers to understand the needs of the customers and boost their experiences in service delivery. Venice, it is a popular destination for tourists, is being faced with different challenges in terms of sustainability. Despite the innovativeness of marketers in creating experiences and services that meet the demands of the consumers, Venice faces challenges such as rising water levels due to climate change, over-tourism, and energy and waste management challenges. Therefore, it is important to understand some of the sustainable strategies for ensuring successful operations in Venice in the longer term. Local government should invest in sustainable infrastructure while local businesses should adopt sustainable use of resources and materials.
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