Der Einsatz von virtual reality in der touristischen Online-Kommunikation aus informationsökonomischer Perspektive

Abstract

There has, since the nineteen nineties, been a rapid increase in the use of the internet for marketing and selling tourist products, and internet-based tourism is now governed by keen competition between the providers/suppliers in the tourist trade. This creates a greater need for appropriate measures which will help providers distinguish themselves from other competitors and win customers for their offer. From a marketing-strategic point of view one approach to this problem is to convey product information in a more efficient and customer-friendly way. The 2D technologies currently used on the internet render such progress difficult, mainly because the immaterial nature of tourist goods creates a considerable difference, preceding a purchase, in the amount of information which are at the supplier's and at the customer's disposal respectively. The informational asymmetry respecting the quality of tourist services leads to a situation where the customer registers uncertainty and may abstain from effecting a purchase altogether, turning instead to other providers and/or products. There is a need to minimize these uncertainties arising from the informational asymmetry between the supplier and the customer by means of appropriate communication political activities. Computer-based three-dimensional representations (Virtual Reality) have been used to transmit complex information and matters in the areas of technology and natural science since the early nineties. In the tourist industry, in contrast to fields such as architecture, medicine and technical construction, the directed deployment of VR remains an exception; no systematic use is made of VR to provide information in the shape of three-dimensional and interactively accessible representations, and the introduction of such representations in a systematic way faces a number of difficulties: there exists a multitude of VR technologies differing in form and function, no criteria are available for classifying the different VR technologies, and little is known about ...