Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
Pratt and colleagues adjusted the incremental expenditure estimates down by 20 per cent to
allow for non-response bias. This technique has been used in previous research (
Hunt
and
Dalton
1983; Woodside and Ronkainen 1984).
Conversion studies make a strong underlying assumption of a direct, causal relationship
between a destination visit and the requested marketing material. This might not necessarily be
the case. Destination visitors draw from a wide range of information sources. By making that
direct assumption, conversion studies cannot evaluate a range of psychological and cognitive or
underlying behaviour motivation from the marketing (Pratt
et al
. 2009).
Woodside and Sakai (2001) undertake a meta-evaluation, that is, an assessment of evaluation
practices across government tourism marketing programmes in the USA. The authors categorize
the evaluations into four effi ciency factors and six indices of effectiveness. Effectiveness indicators
included such measurements as: revenues generated by the tourism marketing programmes;
revenue per inquiry (RPI) using conversion studies; taxes generated from tourism expenditures;
tourist visits, tourism awareness, attitudes and intentions to visit; likelihood of return visits and
likelihood to recommend. Effi ciency indicators include return on investment (ROI), cost-
benefi t analysis, cost per inquiry (CPI) and constructed metrics, such as ratio comparisons (e.g.
CPI/RPI).
Experimental design methodology, it is argued, is able to test causation rather than merely
correlation. The process involves testing possible combinations of different attributes in a marketing
strategy across a sample using a fractional factorial design method. A logistic regression model is
then used to analyze the impact of each stimulus in the experiment (Almquist and Wyner 2001).
Woodside and Sakai (2001) argue for experiential design techniques though they cite several
reasons why the adoption of true experiments has not been taken up. These obstacles include lack
of training and knowledge of evaluation literature; arguments that research costs would be
excessive; comfort with conversion studies and advertising effectiveness studies; and perceived risk
of using alternative evaluation methods. The limitations of the experimental design technique are
that the marketers need extensive knowledge in framing the research, application of theoretically
sound methods and that experimental designs rely on 'main effects', that is, they do not take into
account the impact of one variable on another, through a third variable.
An alternative measurement of campaign effectiveness is Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA)
is used by Wöber and Fesemaier to evaluate the ineffi ciencies of tourism advertising programmes
and consequently to DMOs to benchmark against (Wöber and Fesenmaier 2004). The DEA
method can incorporate multiple inputs and outputs and uses a linear optimization technique.
For example, Wöber and Fesenmaier evaluate the performance of US state DMOs using such
variables as their advertising budgets, the allocation of marketing budgets for both international
and domestic markets and the number of visitors and expenditures generated. Proponents of the
DEA method note that this method does not require any formal system of hypothesis testing and
it requires no a priori information regarding which inputs and outputs are most important in the
evaluation procedure. A drawback with this technique is that the method is largely dependent on
the defi nition of input and outputs and does not provide DMOs with detailed recommendations
concerning a particular marketing strategy.
Morgan and colleagues (2012) propose an integrated approach to evaluation that seeks to link
different elements of buyer readiness states. The four elements they propose include a panel
survey to monitor advertising awareness of marketing campaigns. The second element is a DMO
contact survey similar to traditional conversion research but implemented on a continuous basis.
The third element of their framework is a re-contact survey. The re-contact survey, con-
ducted online, follows up those who responded to the contact survey and seeks to correlate
advertising awareness with visitation as well as probing those who did not visit the destination.
