Reconciling unsatisfying tourism experiences: Message type effectiveness and the role of counterfactual thinking |
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Institution: | 1. King''s Business School, King''s College London – University of London, Level 2, Bush House, 30 Aldwych, London WC2B 4BG, United Kingdom;2. Brighton Business School, University of Brighton, Mithras House, Lewes Road, Brighton BN2 4AT, United Kingdom;2. University of Groningen, Groningen, The Netherlands |
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Abstract: | While attracting new tourists is an important issue in destination marketing, it is also imperative to manage tourists' experience post-trip, particularly in cases of unsatisfying experiences. Yet, the questions of how to rectify unsatisfying tourism experiences received little attention in tourism scholarship. In the present research, we investigated the effectiveness of different forms of marketing messages and the role of counterfactual thinking in the ability of a marketing message to improve tourists' attitudes towards the destination and intentions to recommend, when a tourism experience was not up to tourists' satisfaction. A scenario-based experiment was conducted with 480 respondents. The results showed that user-generated messages and the messages employing emotional appeal were more impactful than destination-generated or rational messages. Respondents who engaged in downward counterfactual thinking, that is imagining the situation in which their experience could have been worse, was shown to have a greater positive effect on unsatisfied tourists. |
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Keywords: | Destination marketing Post-trip experience Post-purchase evaluation Message effectiveness Counterfactual thinking Message appeal Message authorship |
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