Rethinking Marketing Performance Measurement: Justification and Operationalisation of an Alternative Approach to Affiliate Marketing Performance Measurement in Tourism

A number of measurement frameworks have been developed to help organisations assess the effectiveness of their marketing activities. Yet, the approaches provided by these frameworks seem to be largely linear and outdated. Whilst effectively explaining cause-and-effect relationships between marketing efforts and performance in the offline domain, the existent marketing performance measurements frequently fail to capture a full spectrum of marketing influences online and, therefore, fail to portray the construct of marketing performance holistically. In opposition to the linear explanations of marketing performance, this study argues in favour of a more dynamic complex systems approach to the measurement of online marketing performance. In particular, it proposes a methodology for the development of a complexity-based performance measurement system for affiliate marketing in tourism.