The role of network contracts in place brand management. Current usage and future possibilities of this new Italian legislative instrument

Background of the study The Italian tourism industry is made up of various actors (i.e. hotels, service providers, private and public promotion agencies, tour operators, amusement parks), who usually design their own tourism offer independently. In fact, Italy has many fragmented territorial systems, each one made up of many small businesses which do not coordinate with one another (OECD, 2011). However, researchers as well as and the Italian Government advocate for the emergence of an integrated tourism system to enable and enhance travel and tourism throughout Italy (Rispoli, Tamma, 1996; Pencarelli, Forlani, 2002; Sciarelli, 2007). Currently, several travel destinations in Italy are lacking competitiveness in the tourism industry, making this call for collaboration even more important. Today, Italian destinations are not able to attract huge flows of new tourists (Banca d’Italia, 2013) because of their lack of financial and human resources (usually associated to small company dimension), marketing and tourism promotion which prevent them from reaching foreign markets. To overcome this issue, several forms of inter-firm cooperation and collaboration between public and private actors are already being recognized. Past literature (Bonetti et al, 2006; Sciarelli, 2007) has focused on territorial local systems (SLT) and destination management issues, appreciating alliances creation between public and private entities devoted to promote places and destination brands (Betti et al., 2009; Balakrishnan M.S., 2009), while giving less importance to private networks like those created through the legislative instrument called ‘network contract’. Research questions and objectives Which contribution the network contract can offer to create a coordinated territorial tourism system? How private collaborative initiatives can contribute to create and promote a territorial brand? First we aim to analyse the network contract usage in the tourism industry in Italy, in terms of location, links to the territory, common goals, number and types of participants. Secondly, we aim to understand whether the network contract is instrumental in realizing more sophisticated forms of cooperation, including public actors. Lastly, relationships with existing territorial identities are investigated as well as the usage of territorial brands. Methodology The empirical research is articulated on two levels. The first level is quali-quantitative and attempts to provide a descriptive analysis of current network contracts in Italy regarding the tourism sector. Document analysis has been used. The second level is exclusively qualitative and focuses on few paradigmatic case studies, which have been investigated through direct interviews. Case study analysis has been preferred (Yin, 2003) because it favors the comprehension of the dynamics that characterize specific contexts (Eisenhardt, 1989). Expected results Thanks to the flexibility of the network contract, which aggregates participants around common goals while keeping their independence (Aureli, Del Baldo, 2012), we expect to detect an increasing usage of this instrument. Moreover we expect it to be utilized extensively to formalize and organize existing links among enterprises of the same territory.With reference to our second research question, we expect to find the promotion and/or the management of existing territorial brands among examined networks’ main activities as functional to increase their competitiveness. Moreover, in some cases networks might be creators of a territorial brand.