The digital world requires the implementation of new technologies and customer-driven business transformation. As the tourism sector may experience unanticipated ways of developing new technologies due to the current global health crisis, the standard travel experience could be changed. The main aim of this study was to analyze the influence of digitalization and tourists’ preferences in terms of accommodation and economic well-being implying sustainability. This paper applied a regression analysis and principal component analysis to achieve the above objective. Research exposed the fact that tourists’ preferences towards green destinations and ecological accommodation establishments, as well as Internet use in travel planning, may have a significant influence on the sustainability of tourism. This study identified behavioral models of 30 European countries from the sustainable tourism and digitalization perspective and made recommendations on economic and social policy measures to ensure the sustainable nature of tourism activity.
Nowadays, more and more business organizations are encouraged to find ways to produce high-quality products that are offered to users for their temporary enjoyment and then redistributed or sent to the next user pending. This is done without being conditioned to believe that we need to own something, use it for certain functions for a limited amount of time, and then throw it away. Toys are a perfect candidate for this approach. Given the lack of case studies explaining how companies can design and implement a circular economy in practice, especially in the toy industry, this study aimed to develop a case study based on Evertoys, a start-up operating in Romania, which is a country where the circular economy is only in an infancy phase. This study’s objective was to analyze this business model from the circular economy perspective. Regarding the methodology, the work followed the research strategy of the case study, which was developed by analyzing the opportunities and challenges of this toy-as-a-service model and taking into consideration the components of the Business Model Canvas. Our findings indicated the presence of driving factors, as well as barriers, in the implementation of circular economy practices.
Along with the digital technologies’ advance over the last decade, more sales and marketing channels have emerged, causing consumers to change their habits and purchasing behavior. This paper appears in the context of such an issue and aims both to present the increasingly omni-channel nature of the consumer behavior and to identify and emphasize the needs and expectations of the customers, in line with the development of the Internet. Therefore, the paper presents the evolution of the modern consumer considering the Web conversion from a static environment to an interactive community. During the two intertwined phases of Web development presented in this paper, namely Web 2.0 and Web 3.0, customers have evolved from a highly informed and socially connected to a more empowered and engaged customer, defined by the ability to adapt and apply new technologies to meet their specific individual needs and seeking for an even emotional bond with brands. The paper also exposes how the social media landscape has generated a power shift from the business organizations toward the consumer and how social media can be a powerful tool with which consumers can react if they feel that their rights are aggrieved by business organizations.