“Tourism consumer behavior is always critical for marketer”- describe this statement with
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Our review begins by examining what we believe to be the key concepts in tourism CB research. Our coverage of the key concepts is therefore intentionally not exhaustive, but rather places emphasis on what we believe to be the most important conceptual dimensions of tourism CB research: decision-making, values, motivations, self-concept and personality, expectations, attitudes, perceptions, satisfaction and trust and loyalty. We address these concepts sequentially, by teasing out definitional issues, tracing their historical use in tourism research and identifying research gaps. From Table 1, it is clear that among the concepts reviewed, motivations (n = 89) and satisfaction, trust and loyalty (n = 117) are the most researched while values (n = 9) and self-concept and personality (n = 16) are the least researched. Table 2 summarises the studies (n = 126) included that relate to the key concepts.
Table 2. Articles cited in this review from the three leading mainstream tourism journals.
CSVDisplay Table
Decision-making
Understanding consumer decision-making is a cornerstone of marketing strategy. CB in tourism is underpinned by general assumptions about how decisions are made. The processes involved in CB decision-making require the use of models rather than definitions alone to understand their complexity (Swarbrooke & Horner, 2004). Traditionally, CB research has been influenced by research outside tourism, notably the classical buyer behaviour school of thought (Decrop & Snelders, 2004; Sirakaya & Woodside, 2005). The offspring of this school of thought, whether the grand models of CB (Engel, Kollat, & Blackwell, 1968; Howard & Sheth, 1969) or tourism CB models (Mathieson & Wall, 1982; Wahab, Crompton, & Rothfield, 1976) view consumers as rational decision-makers. One of the main assumptions of these models is that decisions are thought to follow a sequence from attitude to intention to behaviour (Decrop, 2010; Decrop & Snelders, 2004). CB research in tourism continues to be marked by studies underpinned by the assumption of rational decision-making. These studies explore causal relationships by means of ‘variance’ analysis, which estimates how much of an outcome (or dependent) variable is explained by relevant explanatory (or independent) variables (Smallman & Moore, 2010). The theories of Reasoned Action and Planned Behaviour, which are based on the expectancy-value model of attitudes (Fishbein, 1963), are examples of sequential theories which continue to be used by tourism researchers (Oh & Hsu, 2001; Quintal et al., 2010).
These models continue to be criticised by several researchers, who challenge their assumptions. One of the main arguments against such models is that they are unable to capture the complexity of decision-making in tourism, which comes from the unique context in which travel decisions are made (Hyde & Lawson, 2003). Complexity arises from the fact that travel decision-making involves multiple decisions about the various elements of the vacation itinerary (Decrop & Snelders, 2004; Hyde & Lawson, 2003), some of which are made prior to the arrival, while others are made while at the destination (Choi et al., 2012). Moreover, these models do not take into account dyadic or group decisions, which have been shown to be common in a tourism context (Bronner & de Hoog, 2008; Kang & Hsu, 2005; Litvin et al., 2004) and which we will discuss further in the section on group and joint decision-making. Finally, complexity is also heightened by the fact that many travel decisions are highly influenced by situational factors (Decrop & Snelders, 2004; March & Woodside, 2005).
We argue that such levels of complexity can only be fully captured through a focus on the process of tourist decision-making. Yet, research on tourist decision-making continues to focus little on process aspects. The ability of choice models to capture the process aspects of decision-making is heavily criticised (Smallman & Moore, 2010), suggesting that these can only be captured through less-structured methodologies involving narrative accounts of actions and activities. Some (mainly quantitative) studies purporting to focus on process aspects (Barros et al., 2008; Nicolau & Más, 2005) are thus better viewed as ‘choice set’ models (Smallman & Moore, 2010), hence concentrating on the outputs of the decision-making process rather than the process itself. We concur with Smallman and Moore's (2010) view that more process studies are needed.