Meskerem Mitiku (PhD)Meraf Yohannes Hailemariam2026-03-062026-03-062025-06-28https://etd.aau.edu.et/handle/123456789/7903This study explores how Ethiopia's inbound tour operators (ITOs) adapt digital marketing practices to create business value in the face of changing global tourism system dynamics and competitive challenges. While digital marketing is paramount to improving competitiveness, there remains limited understanding of how practitioners in emerging economies adapt these practices to their specific organizational and environmental contexts. Building on the Marketing-as-Practice (MAP) framework, the Resource-Based-View (RBV), and the Technology-Organization-Environment (TOE) model, the study uses a mixed-methods approach. It combines SMARTPLS-based quantitative analysis with qualitative interviews, to consider how digital marketing practices are shaped by internal and external contextual factors. The study shows that, while technological, organizational, environmental and human competence contexts all significantly shape practitioner behaviour, they are mediated through, and translated by, practitioners’ enactment and praxis, which ultimately drive value creation. Practices relating to social media engagement, CRM integration, and content creation can generate value when meaningfully informed by proactive and context-sensitive enactments by practitioners, while outmoded tools, skill gaps and cultural resistance serve to prevent success. The findings challenge traditional linear models, highlighting the central role of agency in practitioners’ ability to leverage digital resources, and help to contribute to advancing theory on marketing praxis and digital transformation in tourism. Practical recommendations for augmenting human capital, fostering digital innovation and improving the competitiveness of Ethiopia’s inbound tourism sector are provided.enThesis