Restaurant membership fee and customer choice: The effects of sunk cost and feelings of regret

Membership marketing is highly prevalent in today's restaurant industry. The purpose of the study was to examine the joint effects of membership fees and competition on customer choice, willingness to join other programs and feelings of regret in a restaurant setting. Using a 2×2×2$2\times 2\times 2$ experimental design, the study found that the effect of sunk cost and mental accounting do exist. Moreover, high levels of regret were detected when a higher membership fee was paid and when the competition provided superior service or a lower membership fee. However, when the membership fee was low, customers were more reluctant to go to another restaurant that offered a membership program. Marketing implications for restaurateurs are discussed.     

Use value of cultural experiences: A comparison of contingent valuation and travel cost

Few applications to assess the value of cultural experiences exist. This is particularly frustrating for cultural institutions, as it provides them with few opportunities to reveal their importance in terms of attractiveness and thus what drives tourism demand. This study applies the travel cost method (TCM) and contingent valuation method (CVM) to assess the value of two rural cultural institutions in order to compare the results of the valuation methods.The results reveal that visitor experiences consist of a core cultural experience as well as other valuable experiences before and after. Whereas CVM allows for a valuation of the core cultural experience separately from other experiences, the TCM is limited to an overall assessment. The TCM is therefore an inappropriate measure of the value of the cultural experiences when the total experience includes several other experiences.If visitors travel for the sake of only one cultural experience, TCM may be preferable due to its simple applicability and cost efficiency. If, however, as is most often the case, a cultural experience is part of a bundle of experiences, the application of CVM is recommendable. This is also the case, if only visitors who state the cultural experience to be the primary reason for travelling are included.     

Institutions and transaction costs in foreign-local hotel ventures: A grounded investigation in the developing Pacific

This research investigates how to develop a viable hotel venture where the barriers to both tourism and business development are substantial. To this end, 48 interviews were conducted in a Pacific Island country which lacks a viable tourism industry, while being ranked one of the most difficult places to do business on the planet. Data were collected and analyzed using grounded theory method in conjunction with transaction costs economics as meta-theoretical lens. The grounded theory developed is characterized by a process approach to hotel development called Insider-Outsider Connections and Partnerships (IOCP). As opposed to the status quo approach to foreign-local hotel ventures predicated on idealistic presumptions regarding formal institutions, the IOCP elucidates how transaction costs associated with such ventures can be economized by recognizing, valuing, and utilizing informal institutions. These findings regarding working within, rather than ignoring, the institutional reality provide a revitalized platform for hotel practitioners and researchers alike.     

Modifying and applying time and cost blocks: The case of E-Da theme park,Kaohsiung, Taiwan

The main purpose of this study is to modify and apply a management tool called time and cost blocks (TCB). The model was modified to adjust how the “benefit indicator” was measured and further enhanced by inclusion of visitor satisfaction scores and revisiting intention. Data collection was accomplished by means of a diary-type semi-structured questionnaire, which was administered in face-to-face interviews with 655 visitors of the E-Da World theme park in Kaohsiung, Taiwan. The results indicate that participation intensity (PI) and benefit indicator (BI) have a significant relationship with satisfaction and revisiting intention.     

Sequential choice behavior: Going on vacation and type of destination

The literature of destination choice has so far studied multi-stage decision making processes that are more representative of the general choice behavior of tourists (e.g. going on vacation, going abroad, and destination country). Alternatively, this study proposes a multi-stage decision process to the choice of tourist destination types (going on vacation, coastal character, and urban character of the destination) as these choice sets are more idiosyncratic to tourists who prefer a specific type of tourist destination (e.g. Spain with clear coastal and inland variations). In order to test this multi-stage choice process as well as the sequential order of both decisions, coastal character and urban character, the current study analyses decision processes vs. different hierarchical multi-stage processes (going on vacation and coastal character preceding urban character; and going on vacation and urban character preceding coastal character). The empirical findings support the existence of a multi-stage choice process where coastal character precedes the urban character destination choice. The main implication of these findings is that, given the limited human analytical capability, a hierarchical choice process can be useful to handle the information overload and the complexity inherent to the destination type choice.     

The impact of tourism activity type on emotion and storytelling: The moderating roles of travel companion presence and relative ability

This research starts by distinguishing how different emotion components may be stimulated by different product types. Based on initial findings, a conceptual model is developed and tested that investigates a tourist's emotional arousal as a mediating variable between the tourism activity type and subsequent storytelling intentions. Based on social facilitation theory and self-expansion model, this research further investigates the potential moderating effect of having a travel companion and that companion's relative ability related to the tourism activity type on the impact of tourism activity type on emotional arousal. Four experiments are used to test the hypothesized relationships. Findings indicate that an experiential purchase has a greater effect on emotional arousal (not pleasure) than the purchase of a physical good. A more challenging(relaxing) tourist activity has a stronger(weaker) positive impact on emotional arousal and a tourist's storytelling intentions. Emotional arousal fully mediates the effect of tourism activity type on storytelling intentions. Having a travel companion, or not, was found to moderate the relationship of tourist activity type and emotional arousal. A challenging tourism activity has a stronger positive effect on a tourist's arousal when traveling with a companion. The arousal effect of engaging in a challenging tourism activity is attenuated when traveling alone. Moreover, based on the moderating effect of having a companion, or not, the perceived ability of a travel companion regarding the type of activity engaged in, was also found to moderate the link between activity type and emotional arousal. The greater the traveling companion's relative perceived ability, the greater the effect on emotional arousal for challenging tourism activities. This effect is attenuated when the ability of the traveling companion is perceived as less than that of the tourist. The paper closes with a discussion of theoretical contributions and managerial implications derived from the findings.     

When,where, and with whom during crisis: The effect of risk perceptions and psychological distance on travel intentions

We investigate how risk perceptions and psychological distance impacted people's travel intentions during Covid-19. Our findings reveal that traveling to a high-risk destination increased people's risk perceptions of Covid-19, and their risk perceptions at the destination, which, in turn, reduced people's travel intentions. We identify temporal, spatial, and social distance (the “when, where, and with whom” of traveling) as moderators of these effects; while social distance moderates the effect of risk, on risk perceptions, temporal and spatial distance moderate the effect of risk perceptions on travel intentions. We outline theoretical contributions and implications for tourism during crisis.     

Ethical leadership and its impact on service innovative behavior: The role of LMX and job autonomy

This study examined the effect of ethical leadership on service innovative behavior of employees at small and medium sized tourist hotels in Uttarakhand, India. It has forwarded an integrated model that highlights the relationship between ethical leadership and employees' service innovative behavior while interacting through leader-member exchange and job autonomy. Using a sample of 468 customer contact employees and their 117 supervisors, hierarchical regression was conducted to establish the relationship. Findings of the study revealed that ethical leadership promoted service innovative behavior of the hotel employees mediated through leader-member exchanges. Further, it was also found that the level of service innovative behavior was commensurate to the perception of employee job autonomy. Based on the study findings, implications for theory and practice are discussed.     

The effect of perceived trust on electronic commerce: Shopping online for tourism products and services in South Korea

According to the OECD's 2008 statistics (Seoul Finance Internet News, 2009), Korea was ranked number one in terms of the percentage of homes with Internet access, at 80.6% of the total population. The survey also reported that two-thirds of Koreans with access to the Internet at home are online shoppers. Many tourism companies now actively use Internet sites as a key marketing and sales vehicle for their products and services. To be successful, tourism e-commerce services must be trustworthy.     

Impact of distance on the arrivals,behaviours and attitudes of international tourists in Hong Kong: A longitudinal approach

This study revisits the impact of distance on international tourist behaviours in Hong Kong. This work divides and cross-validates the concept of distance into physical and cultural distance. This work also proposes an alternative cultural distance measure by introducing optimal weight amongst Hofstede's dimensions and then compares the proposed measure with the traditional Kogut and Singh's and Kandogan's measures. By using data from the Visitor Profile Report of the Hong Kong Tourism Board and the World Trade Organisation from 2002 to 2017, along with latent growth curve modelling, multivariate regression and panel data analysis, findings confirmed the significant role of physical and cultural distance. In addition, quadratic relationships are detected using cross-validation methods. The effect of physical distance on tourist demands clearly dominates that of cultural distance in the overall market. The problem of spurious correlation and the results of three cultural distance measures are also discussed.