People-First Tourism Lab Blog

In competitive markets access to customers is often controlled by retail monopolies. In those situations, small and micro-businesses recurrently face great barriers to make their goods and services visible to potential customers. The control exerted by intermediaries is often due to customers’ lack of information about suppliers, or because of excessive complexity of supply. At its core, retail monopolies are dependent on information imbalances, and therefore, such situations can be addressed with information-based solutions that improve info flow between suppliers and their potential customers.  Recently, advances in information and communication technologies (ICTs) have created innovations that can moderate large and complex sets of product offerings and make them available to customers in efficient ways. Often, these solutions have taken the form of web marketplaces where micro-entrepreneurs can offer their services to desiring customers. It is now possible to sell exp...