Value, satisfaction and behavioural intentions in an adventure tourism context - Essay Example

Review of “Value, Satisfaction and Behavioural Intentions in an Adventure Tourism Context” The purpose of this review is to evaluate Paul William and Geoffrey N. Soutar’s research paper, “Value, Satisfaction and Behavioural Intentions in an Adventure Tourism Context” published in an Elsevier Journal in 2009, from an utilitarian perspective and therefore to assess their investigations’ contribution to the ongoing research on adventure tourism. Further this review will critically evaluate the validity and eligibility, in particular, of their research. In this regard, especially the literature review, method and analysis sections will be assesses and evaluated critically in search of any anomalies misinterpretations on the researchers’ side that might affect their findings. In their article, Williams and Soutar have investigated into the impacts of the adventure tourists’ value and satisfaction on the consumers’ consumption, decision-making and future intentions for the product of adventure tourism. In William and Soutar’s own words, the study is “an attempt to answer some of these questions and used a recognized services marketing framework to examine the relationships between adventure tourists’ perceptions of value, satisfaction and future intentions” (414). Though William and Soutar’s exploration into the interrelations between the adventure “tourists’ perceptions of value, satisfaction and future intentions” in both theoretical and practical frameworks from a “Multidimensional Perspective of Customer Value” perspective is not any novel exploration into the adventure tourism from the consumers’ perspective, their research sets a significant milestone for the future researches in this field, while enabling the researchers to have a fresh look of the behavioural pattern of the adventure tourists’ perception of values and their future intentions. In an increasingly flourishing market of adventure tourism during the past ten years or so, the frontiers of the existing tourism industries in countries around the world start to put more attention on appending the components of adventure tourism by either restructuring or reorganizing the existing one. Consequently the nature and emerging structure of adventure tourism increasingly began to be in the focus of the investigation and research of the scholars in this field. The major trend of the scholars’ researches on adventure tourism remains focused on the achievement of the consumers’ attention through quality of service. But the consumers’ value as well as their perception of adventure tourism has remained unexplored. Referring to scholars like Baker and Crompton (2000), Botterill and Crompton (1996), Jayanti and Ghosh (1996) and others, William and Soutar contend that a significant number of studies on the “intangibility, dynamism and subjectivity” of the tourists’ consumptions as well as on the “functional, objective and tangible components” of consumerism in a tourist destination have been led by the researchers in the past years, there is a “lack of understanding about the nature of these experiences or their relationship with marketing constructs, such as service quality, customer value or satisfaction” (415). Being inspired by this research gap, William and Soutar attempt to provide his readers with a deeper insight into the behavioural nature of a tourist’s intention and choice for adventure tourism. For this research, William and Soutar mainly depended on the quantitative analysis of the data converted into numeric values. The collected the consumer value, satisfaction and intentions related data from on-spot adventure tourists who traveled “on four-wheel drive adventure tours to the Pinnacles in Western Australia” (419). They especially put emphasis on the particular functional and objective features, of the adventure tourist spot, such as the spatial and durational length of the tours, geophysical nature of the spot, safety and security, insurance for other life-supporting materials, and other features that might fulfill the tourists’ adventure pursuits etc. The researchers took careful attempts to keep the data unbiased. The data were collected from about “450 passengers on 41 different tours from the two companies” through questionnaires that include “questions on the data required for this study” (420). In order measure the participants’ perception of value, “satisfaction and intention questions” the researchers asked them “to rate their perceptions on a 7-point Likert scale with ‘‘1’’ representing ‘‘Strongly Disagree’’ and ‘‘7’’ representing “Strongly Agree” and the value dimensions were chosen from “the PERVAL value scale” (422). The data were analyzed in two stages: in the first stage, through a confirmatory factor analysis, the “composite constructs for the various constructs of interest were estimated” in order to identify “the relationships between a latent construct and its observed variables” (422). In the second stage, those composite constructs were handled to explore the “relationships between the various value dimensions and their respective impact on customer satisfaction and customer intentions” (423). The study reported the following findings: a. the result obtained from the analysis of the data shows a clear coherence with some of the previous studies to a great extent, b. consumer values functioned as factors that determine a consumer’s satisfaction and future intension, c. value dimension have influenced both the consumers’ satisfaction and intention, d. tour operators-provided values such as value-for-money and novelty value had positive effect on the tourists’ intention and desire for future tourism. The researchers reached the conclusion that the multidimensional framework of value has significant influence on the consumers’ perception of the adventure component of tourism products. Apart from the value-for-money dimension, the socio-psychological value dimensions such as novelty value and emotional values are greatly influential on the consumers’ decision making. Often the lacking of value-for-money can be compensated socio-psychological value dimensions of a tourism product, as William and Soutar says, “Adventure travelers’ need to gain emotional highs and an adrenalin rush has been noted previously and this study confirmed the strong relationship between emotional value, satisfaction and customer intentions in such a context” (429). This study has several implications for both the marketing practice and future research in this field. For marketing practice, the study suggests that the tour operators need to be more attentive to the provisions of socio-psychological values “such as happiness, enjoyment, excitement, thrills and adrenalin rush” (429). But emotional value and novelty may be related to other negative emotional values such fear, lack safety and security. Therefore, adventure operators “need to manage the emotional highs, within the boundaries of professional risk management to ensure such activities are sustainable” (430). The study shows that socio-psychological values within the multidimensional perspective of consumers’ value play significant role in influencing a consumer’s sense of satisfaction and future intentions. But due to the quantitative approach to the research topic the researchers were not able to encompass other psychological values within their research area. One such unexplored value is the tourists’ cultural values. Though exploration of cultural values may fall in a different tourism product category of cultural tourism, a tourist’s cultural perception of adventure tourism can also impact his or her satisfaction and future intention. So this study may be helpful to future researches on this subject. William and Soutar’s research on customer’s value, satisfaction and intention is important for me in a number of ways. From writing this review I learned that customers’ values and satisfaction can influence their future intension. I think that the current adventure tourism industry can evaluate their marketing strategy while focusing more on the social values, emotional values, whereas some specific values such as functional value, value-for-money, and novelty value receive the most priority in attracting the tourists. Adventure tour company’s attempts to enhance the socio-psychological values will greatly contribute to the growth of the number of the returning tourists and recommended tourists. Socio-psychological values are greatly related to the hospitality sector of the tourism industry. Therefore, the hospitality management should put more emphasis on these values. References William, P. and Soutar, G. N. (2009) “Value, Satisfaction and Behavioural Intentions in an Adventure Tourism Context”, Annals of Tourism Research, Vol. 36, No. 3, pp. 413–438,   Read More