Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
perspective, the behaviourist paradigm, the cognitivist approach and the postmodern perspective
(Decrop 2010).
The micro-economic approach offers a normative view of a rational consumer who makes
decisions in order to maximize his/her utility (satisfaction) within his/her budget constraint.
This approach aims at predicting and explaining how the consumer should behave and not how
s/he really behaves. This static and purely individual approach presents products as global entities
and decisions as being timeless and detached from any environmental infl uence ('all other things
being equal'). Decisions are thought to be governed by price: the lower the price, the higher the
volume of demand and vice versa. In addition, any product (holiday alternative) is thought to
possess objective characteristics or attributes that are used by consumers in their evaluations.
Utility is ultimately derived from these attributes and maximizing utility requires choosing a
product alternative that generates the optimum bundle of attributes. The questions of how and
why the holidaymaker arrives at actual choices are dismissed.
The motivational perspective is inspired by the psycho-analytic theories developed by
Dichter, Freud and/or Jung, which do not focus on the objective results (utilities) of behaviours
but on their subjective causes in the individual's inner world. Motivation refers to the process by
which a consumer is driven to act/behave in a certain way. It is characterized by a 'state of
tension within the individual which arouses, directs and maintains behaviour toward a goal'
(Mullen and Johnson 1990: 178). The motivational approach aims to uncover the deep/latent
motives that underlie behaviour and consumption. These reasons are often assumed to be either
hidden or disclosed, thus researchers have to penetrate the individual's inner world of previously
lived experiences in order to discover them.
The behaviourist paradigm is rooted in behavioural psychology (e.g. Pavlov, Skinner). It is
similar to the
motivational approach in that it strives to understand the reasons of behaviours in
order to better motivate consumers to buy products and to stay loyal to the company. However,
behaviourism presents a very deterministic view on behaviour, assuming that it is possible to
condition consumers and to create automatic responses. The repetition of stimuli is thought
necessary to create such conditioning. For example, the repetition of advertising stimuli is likely
to produce strong buying habits, through fi rst provoking and then reinforcing positive responses
by consumers.
The cognitivist approach today represents the prevailing paradigm for theorizing consumer/
tourist behaviour. Drawing from cognitive and social psychology, this approach focuses on the
individual's mental (cognitive) world. Its goal is to understand the consumer's processes for
solving problems. The cognitive paradigm focuses on the socio-psychological variables and
processes involved in DM. The consumer is no longer passive but becomes an actor of his/her
choices and behaviours: s/he thinks and develops rules and strategies in order to solve
his/her problems, to satisfy his/her needs. Perception and information processing are the core
processes for these activities. The consumer is presented as a risk-averse person who never
stops collecting and processing information in order to make satisfying choices. Such cognitive
principles lie at the core of tourist DM theories presented in the next section.
In addition to the previous approaches, a new perspective on tourist behaviour has emerged
in the last 20 years. This perspective is related to the postmodern turn in social sciences and to
the emergence of Consumer Culture Theory (CCT; Arnould and Thompson 2005). Postmodern
research is characterized by an ontological, epistemological and methodological break; the goal
is no longer to explain and predict behaviour but to understand the
how's
and
why's
of behaviour
in a complex world. Postmodernism suggests a less normative and more relative perspective than
the former paradigms, based on the premise that consumers are often confronted with routine
choices and that they let themselves be guided by simple decision rules (e.g. 'I buy the cheapest
