Business application of the sociological and psychological aspects of communities of interest : the case of nautical tourism in Croatia

In this paper, we discuss how psychological characteristics of tourists, belonging to the same community of interest, their social interactions and the emergence of 'community-like' social structures influence major marketing outcomes in nautical tourism. We hypothesize that the communities of interests lead to the mutual social bonding in different fields, relevant for business, which produces tangible marketing outcomes. The initial empirical analysis for this hypothesis is conducted for the case of nautical tourism on the Croatian Adriatic.