Hofstede's Cultural Dimensions and Tourist Behaviors: A ... - Esan

28 Journal of Economics, Finance and Administrative ScienceDecember 2011TOURIST BEHAVIOR DOMAINSAs discussed earlier in this paper, tourism is a complexglobal phenomenon involving a multitude of decisionsrelated to the purchase and consumption of a variety ofgoods as well as services. Marketing textbooks (Kotler& Keller, 2009) identify five stages of decision making:1) need recognition/purchase motives; 2) informationsearch and information acquisition; 3) evaluation ofalternatives, which involves rating of options and leadsto formation of preferences and formation of behavioralintentions; 4) actual purchase and consumption decision,which involves purchase transaction related decisions(dealer choice, brand choice etc.), as well as consumptionrelated decisions (frequency of purchase, lightversus heavy users etc.); and 5) post-purchase behaviorssuch as consumer satisfaction/dissatisfaction, brandloyalty/brand switching, complaining/complementingbehaviors, etc.The above five stages of consumer decision makingand related consumer behaviors are regrouped intothree categories: 1) Before Purchase and Consumption;2) During Purchase and Consumption; and, 3) AfterPurchase and Consumption. The “Before” categoryincludes the first three stages of decision making listedabove, which lead to the formation of preferences andbehavioral intentions. The “During” category includesstage 4 and deals with product purchase and consumptionrelated behaviors. The “After” category includesstage 5 and includes behaviors related to evaluationsof the purchase and consumption experiences by theconsumers. Parallel to this, the tourist behaviors areclassified into three overall domains: 1) Before-Travel;2) During-Travel; and, 3) After-Travel. Next, we identifyseveral specific tourist behavior domains under each ofthese three overall groups. These domains are labeledBT1 to BT14 (for the Before-Travel group), DT1 toDT11 (for the During-Travel group) and AT1 to AT30(for the After-Travel group). All these tourist behaviordomains are listed in Table 1.Tourist Behavior Domains Before-TravelThe first decision which a potential tourist is faced withis whether to travel or not, whether he/she can and/orshould travel or not. There are various reasons for thisdilemma. On the “No” side there may be personal,social, or financial constraints; there may be concernsrelated to the travel risk and safety, and, the individualmay have travel anxiety etc. On the “yes” side, thereis ample evidence documenting the benefits of traveland tourism. It fulfills a variety of personal, social, andrecreational needs providing motives and incentives fortravel. These needs may be triggered by a particularoccasion, event or a life cycle stage. Overall, the prospectivetourist has to carefully weight the advantagesand disadvantages of undertaking the travel and tourismactivity and take that very important first decision. Wecall this first decision “Yes-No to Travel” and label it asBT1. The Yes-No factors taken into account as discussedabove are labeled as follows: On the “yes” side, TravelBenefits and Travel Motivations (BT2), Travel Occasion/Event/LifeCycle (BT3). On the “No” side, TravelRisk and Safety concerns and Travel Anxiety (BT4),Personal/Social/Financial constraints (BT5).The assessment of the advantages and disadvantagesof travel and tourism requires information searchand acquisition. The process of information searchand acquisition continues in case the individual hasdecided to undertake travel. Now he/she needs tosearch and collect information related to a variety ofdecisions such as what destination, what type of travelarrangements etc. There exits a multitude of sourcesfrom which the information can be acquired such astravel agents, internet, relatives and friends etc. Theindividuals also vary in terms of their need for planningand prior arrangements. While the informationsearch and acquisition processes continue throughthe During-Travel stage, a substantial proportion ofinformation search and acquisition activity takes placeprior to travel. The above travel behaviors are labeledas follows: Information Search and Acquisition (BT6),Sources of Information (BT7), Trip Planning/PriorArrangements (BT8).Next, the individuals aggregate the collectedinformation and evaluate their alternatives to formpreferences. The evaluation process takes into accountfour main variables: 1) attributes used for evaluationJ. econ. finance adm. sci., 16(31), 2011