Mustafa Obay Al-Dewachi, Alaa Abdul Salam Al-Hamdani
The current study aimed at highlighting the extent to which information technology (henceforth, IT) contributes to the promotion of the concept of market segmentation (henceforth, MS) on a sample of hotel managers in the Kurdistan region. In this study, IT was used as an independent variable, while MS as a dependent variable. Based on this point, the problem of the study was identified by the following question: Does IT affect the promotion of MS in the hotels in question? To answer this question, hypotheses were developed and a questionnaire was designed to measure that purpose. As for the study community, it consisted of 500 participants, with a purposeful sample that included 217 participants of the directors of senior, middle and supervisory management in four- and five-star hotels in the Kurdistan region. Hence, 12 forms of questionnaire were excluded as being useless for analysis. Thus, the number of responses was 205 forms. In addition, statistical methods were employed to analyze the data including SPSS and AMOS. The study found a set of results, the most important of which is the presence of a direct and significant effect of IT on MS. Moreover, the study showed the presence of a direct and significant effect for each dimension of IT (hardware and equipment, software, communication networks, applications, and human resources) on MS. The study also provided recommendations including increasing the interest of hotels in IT through its components of hardware, equipment, software, applications, communication networks and human resources in all hotel operations that take place in hotels in order to facilitate access to the customer, and to bring the distance between the hotel and the customer. Additionally, the study recommended the necessity for paying attention to the process of MS through geographical, demographic, behavioral and psychological considerations to make it easier for hotels to divide customers and know their needs and requirements.