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Distribution costs are an important element in the total cost picture of most companies. Broadly speaking, distribution costs include all costs associated with the transfer of finished goods to the consumer. Profitable operation requires that these costs be analysed and controlled efficiently. While there are difficult technical problems in the area of cost‐determination for physical distribution, techniques for coping with them may be spotted by looking at other areas where cost‐estimation appears to be equally elusive. We note that multiple regression analysis (MRA) has been used to study the distribution of consumer credit. Application of other newer techniques includes use of computer simulation in providing more effective emergency ambulance service and statistical work sampling to estimate costs incurred by the Post Office Department in handling mail prior to delivery, classified by class of mail and service. These applications are in areas at least as complex and difficult as distribution costing and suggest to us that technical problems in this area are not necessarily any more or less difficult than those in other areas of costing.

Depending on the research approach one uses, the development of particular bodies of knowledge over time is the result of a combination of agency, chance, opportunity, patronage, power, or structure. This particular account of the development of geographies of tourism stresses its place as understood within the context of different approaches, different research behaviors and foci, and its location within the wider research community and society. The chapter charts the development of different epistemological, methodological, and theoretical traditions over time, their rise and fall, and, in some cases, rediscovery. The chapter concludes that the marketization of academic production will have an increasingly important influence on the nature and direction of tourism geographies.

We present major aspects of two change‐oriented paradigms — formal logic and the logic of contradiction. For the Western manager, we assert that knowledge of the latter will facilitate strategic innovation in the West, similar to the trend in the Orient. Further, we identify ways in which formal logic and the logic of contradiction differ when applied to strategic innovation. Finally, we argue that the formal logic framework could inhibit competitiveness in the global business arena, whereas approaches derived from the logic of contradiction may enhance competitiveness through their influence on strategic innovation. Ultimately, the management of strategic innovation from this alternate perspective involves not only managing contradiction, but recognizing its potential positive contribution to the innovation process as well.

Travel and tourism have had a long history in the Nordic countries, but research on tourism has a relatively short tradition in the region. Recently, academic interest in the Nordic tourism space has grown and diversified especially as a result of increasing numbers of academics and institutions involved with tourism geographies and studies and education in the region. The Nordic context has provided thematic focus areas for empirical studies that characterize tourism geographies in the region, with topics including nature-based tourism, utilization of wilderness areas, second-home and rural developments, impacts in peripheries, and tourism as a tool for regional development. In addition, there are emerging research themes outside of the traditional core topics, such as urban, events, and heritage tourism.

This chapter aims to familiarize the reader with some of the important aspects of tourism geography in the German-speaking countries. It starts with a primarily historical-genetic perspective on tourism development and the theoretical traditions associated with them. The second section describes the structure of the discipline, with a focus on the institutionalization of the field in the universities including their research specialization. The chapter maintains that tourism geography plays a marginal role compared with other subdisciplines of geography, though this is reflected primarily in its institutionalization and less so in the research undertaken. The last section deals with the current challenges and future prospects in German-speaking geographies of tourism from a problem-centered perspective.

This chapter discusses the main research interests and outputs in the various branches of geography that have influenced the study of tourism from a geographical perspective. It argues that the idiographic tradition has been transversal throughout, leading to the growing interest for tourism within the geography academic community in the last 10 years. There is a focus on the birth of specific research groups, mainly related to a constellation of new university curricula on tourism and—with few exceptions of territorial tradition—to an intermittent availability of public research funds. The chapter concludes with a more general picture of the place of tourism within the geography discipline in Italy and of evolving trends in terms of research results, dissemination, and evaluation.

This chapter reflects upon the trajectory of research in the geography of tourism in Spain. It begins with a review, including the evolution of the main topics present in the subdiscipline, with a special focus on developments since the 1990s. This is followed by an analysis of the current role and potential impact of academic tourism geography and a discussion on the recent growth in the publication of research results in international journals. Of importance are the institutional factors that explain the increasing recognition of research on the geography of tourism in Spain. Finally, the chapter discusses the hegemony of positivist approaches pivoting on land use, local and regional development, impact analysis, and landscape transformation, as well as the emerging links between Spanish tourism geography and the international mainstream schools of thought.

This chapter demonstrates that despite an unfavorable disciplinary climate for new academic subjects in France, tourism found its place in the French geographical scene almost 40 years ago. The first part traces the history of tourism in French geography until the epistemological turn due to the research laboratory MIT in the mid-1990s. It also focuses on the absence of knowledge of the Anglo-American literature and of multidisciplinarity in French research on tourism. The second part focuses on the valorization of tourism geography research in France, emphasizing the development of multidisciplinarity since the early 2000s, including the creation of a multi-disciplinary tourism laboratory and two journals. The chapter concludes reflecting on the possibility of a science of tourism.

The aim of this chapter is to provide a holistic overview of issues and topics regarding tourism geography in Greece: from its origins to its current situation. By following a historical tracking of tourism activities in this country and the growth of tourism geography as an academic domain at the university level, the main goal is to analyze the shift of academic research on tourism from geographical perspective, as presented in both the Greek and English language literature. The chapter concludes that there is a need for practical orientation and redefinition of typologies of tourism geographies in order to apply a more sustainable and cross-disciplinary approach in the academic discourse on Greek tourism.