旅游者中位年龄的几个市场指示意义

年龄是旅游市场细分理论中一个重要的社会—人口学变量,不同的年龄结构对细分市场的旅游行为有着重要的影响。然而,在刻画旅游者年龄结构时,无论是在业界实践还是学界研究中,被普遍采用但标准各异的旅游者年龄"上中下"分组模式却不可避免地制约了相关研究成果之间纵向或横向的比较与验证,需要发展一条可以沟通联系的纽带。文章试图将中位年龄作为这种可能的纽带引入我国旅游市场研究领域,基于国家旅游局公开发布的旅游者年龄统计数据,提出了旅游市场类型的中位年龄划分标准,并在此基础上进一步探讨了旅游者中位年龄在指示市场结构类型、市场环境波动和市场发展分化方面的后效价值,以期为旅游市场营销与管理提供一定的理论依据。

Several Implications of Tourist Median Age in the Tourism Market

Being a socio-demographic variable, age affects not only tourist consumption preferences but also their spatial behavior and travel mode. In other words, age is important in tourism market segmentation theory in the sense that it can affect the process of partitioning behavioral differences between different groups of tourists within the tourism market. However, whether in industry practice or academic research, the frequently employed ＇ high- middle-low＇ classification mode inevitably restricts comparison and validation of the relevant research results, although this limitation can be overcome by using a contmunication ＂bond＂. Based on the statistics on tourist age published by the National Tourism Bureau, the indicator median age is introduced in this paper as a possible communication ＂bond＂ for use in research on the Chinese tourism market. Three types of tourism market are then identified based on tourist median age, namely the young （aged below 35 years old） , adult （aged 35 ~ 45 years old） , and elderly （aged over 45 years old） markets. Young visitors are mainly students and young people who are active, eager to explore new things and attracted to amusement facilities. Adult visitors are mostly middle-aged people who are still energetic, and have steady income and ample discretionary time. In addition, because their children are still growing up, adult visitors may travel with their children to educate them by exposing them to new experiences. Finally, elderly visitors have an extremely strong sense of nostalgia, tend to travel for rest and relaxation or to visit relatives, and have a strong preference for visiting historical sites at their destinations. Research clearly shows that elderly tourists dominate tourism source markets for 29 selected cities in China for which complete historical data are available from the yearbook of China tourism statistics （2000 -2010）. Meanwhile, elderly and young tourists coexist in the tourism source markets at the provincial level for all provinces in mainland China except for Tibet. Additionally, elderly tourists are strongly represented in foreign visitor arrivals from the main tourist source markets for China, but adult visitors clearly dominate. Regarding trends in visitor median age over time, from 1984 to 2010 the median age of foreign visitor arrivals to China shows several obvious fluctuations （e. g. a peak appears in 1997, while there are valleys in 1986, 1989 and 2003）. Differences among the three tourism market segments in China emerged rapidly during the first decade of the 21st Century, and this trend was reflected in median age. Specifically, the median age of tourism source markets for the 29 selected cities in China was obviously higher than the median age of the source markets for the provinces, while the median age of overall foreign visitor arrivals to China lay somewhere between these two extremes. Based on previous work, several functions that the indicator median age fulfills for understanding the tourism market （e. g. classifying market structure, and differentiating market fluctuations and developments） are further analyzed to provide theoretical foundations for tourist marketing.