Applying Ansoff’s growth strategy matrix to consumer segments and typologies in spiritual tourism

The purpose of this paper is to develop strategies for the effective marketing of spiritual tourism. It explores the relevance of marketing strategies by Ansoff to a typology model for spiritual tourism. The typology model was based upon the work of four well known authors of tourism and was used in this paper to investigate various marketing strategies suggested by Ansoff. Qualitative approach was adopted and in-depth interviews were conducted with the tourism operators and spiritual tourists in Australia and Pakistan. The general observations of this original study were that the high involvement spiritual tourists could be further targeted by emphasising market penetration and product development strategies. Market development and product development strategies could be adopted for other medium-to-low intensity tourists and the least interested consumers could become involved by operators applying some highly targeted diversification strategies. Due to the qualitative nature of this study the findings could not be quantified and that has been specified as the future research direction.