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560 strategic business unit
cultural tourists: they are often `infatuated' by the
hosts' culture, which they seek to `experience' but
do little to understand.
Newcomers, and strangers sojourning in a host
setting, typically experience some degree of culture
shock in their encounter with it, and feel
uncomfortable or unable to function normally.
Therefore, strangers of a common background
tend to create their own `environmental bubble'
within this setting, establishing their own associations,
schools, services, places of worship and
neighbourhoods which resemble the surroundings
with which they are familiar. Travellers, who may
suffer even more from direct exposure to strangeness
than more permanent strangers, do not have
the opportunity and means to establish an
`environmental bubble' by themselves. Personal
guests are provided the equivalent of such a bubble
by the home of their hosts. Impersonal guests, such
as tourists, make use of a commercialised bubble
consisting of hotels, restaurants and a variety of
travel and personal services provided by the local
tourism industry. Various tourist types can be
distinguished by the extent to which they confine
themselves to the familiarity of that bubble, or tend
to expose themselves to the strangeness of the host
surroundings.
References
Schuetz, A. �1944) `The stranger: an essay in social
psychology', American Journal of Sociology 49�6):
499±507.
Simmel, G. �1950 [1907]) `The stranger', in H.
Wolff �ed.), The Sociology of George Simmel, London:
Free Press, 402±8.
Siu, P.C.P. �1952) `The sojourner', American Journal
of Sociology 58: 34±44.
Further reading
Harman, L.D. �1988) The Modern Stranger:On
Language and Membership, Berlin: Mouton de
Gruyter.
Yoshida, T. �1981) `The stranger as God: the place
of the outsider in Japanese fold religion',
Ethnology 20�2): 87±99.
ERIK COHEN, ISRAEL
strategic business unit
A strategic business unit, in tourism as well as other
establishments, is the primary generator of cash
flow for that firm. It is where resources are
concentrated in order to produce revenues and
incur costs associated with the production of goods
and services that make up the firms core
competitive methods.
Further reading
Pearce, J.A. and Robinson, R.B. �1994) Strategic
Management, Boston: Irwin, 344±6.
strategic marketing
MICHAEL D. OLSEN, USA
Strategic marketing involves the analysis, planning,
implementation and control of an organisation's
efforts over the longer term to satisfy
customer needs and wants in the context of a
competitive microenvironment and a set of macroenvironmental
conditions and trends. Strategic
marketing is a central sub-element of an organisation's
or corporation's search for direction. It is
undertaken as part of the organisation's overall
planning process. Together with other functional
plans concerning finance, production/operations
and human resource management, strategic marketing
plans identify how a corporation and its
various strategic business units are to achieve their
long-term vision and objectives
Whereas marketing management deals with
an organisation's activities to develop, implement
and direct marketing programmes designed to
achieve designated business goals, strategic marketing
focuses on the formulation of those goals, and
the means and timing of realising their achievement.
The interplay of three forces, known as the
strategic 3 Cs ± the customer, the competition and
the corporation ± is central to strategic marketing.
Effective plans must deliver better value to
customers �or tourists), while capitalising on
corporate strengths and addressing weaknesses,
and differentiating the organisation's product
effectively from its competitors. Trends in the