Consumer satisfaction may be the ultimate goal in marketing a company. That is, it is true that the most important activity in company marketing effort is to understand the level of consumer satisfaction, to identify factors contributing to consumer s...
Consumer satisfaction may be the ultimate goal in marketing a company. That is, it is true that the most important activity in company marketing effort is to understand the level of consumer satisfaction, to identify factors contributing to consumer satisfaction, and to develop strategies and practices to promote consumer satisfaction. Furthermore. "the study of satisfaction" must be considered important from the perspective of the public and social policies.
In the tourism industry, consumer satisfaction with package tour products has been seriously underresearches to date. Despite the importance of consumer satisfaction in marketing the tourism industry, seriously lacking are studies identifying consumer-oriented satisfaction factors and applying there factors in actual company marketing. This study attempted to determine factors affecting tourist satisfaction with package tour products from the perspective of consumers and develop ways of promoting these factors through a systematic marketing model.
Besides many other determinants of tourist satisfaction, the source of information and the performance of the tours product appeared to be most critical. In addition, the level of satisfaction appeared to play a critical role in determining the willingness to repurchasers and recommend. These results show that tourism consumers have a strong desire to obtain accurate information on the tour product before they purchase. These results also evidence that tourist satisfaction could be improved with an increased performance of the tour product.
Therefore, to improve tourist consumer satisfaction companies should manage efficient the "word-of-mouth" communication of loyal consumers and, at the same time, exert to provide consumer with professional as well as specialized information. personalized and humanistic services meed to be considered in the planning and managing process of tour products in order to enhance product performance.
The current issues of this study are as follows:
First, according to the results of this study, the expectation has indirect effect on the disconfirmation and performance rather than direct effect on the tourist satisfaction. The higher the tourist expectation level, the better the tourist evaluation. If the expectation is extremely high, the tourist evaluation could be low because of high degree if disconfirmation. In this point; marketing expectation management of three of elements, which decides tourist expectation management of three elements, which decides tourist expectation at a comparison level, are required.
(1) Expectation management of the past visit experience of tourists
(2) Expectation management of visitors' behaviors such as word-of-mouth, complaint.
(3) Expectation management by aggressive promotion activities
Second, marketing strategy should be established for the service and cost section respectively. Especially, the high expectation that exceed the real cost should be carefully managed.
Even if the high expectation of tourists contributes to the visit decision, various kinds of discontent behavior and negative word of mouth effect might be induced. Therefore for the advertisement strategy, the expectation discordance should be minimized in the cost section such as price, accessibility, and availability by forming the practical expectation.
Third, as a result of this study, the overall tourist satisfaction over tourist destination would be controlled by price, accessibility, and availability, as well as service quality of tourist resort. Therefore, the strategy that improves the quality of tourist satisfaction should be established for the section of both service and cost satisfaction, respectively.
In conclusion, the improvement of service quality would be a primary assignment however reasonable pricing, the improvement of availability, accessibility, and appropriate marketing mix could be useful to visitor satisfaction.