Introduction - Tourism Marketing - page 8

Neuhofer and Buhalis in Chapter 10 . Decrop argues that holistic approaches are required to
develop more complete and nuanced understandings of tourist behaviour in the future.
Tourists are not an homogenous group and yet tourism marketing has applied a fairly
standardized set of marketing practices. In Chapter 20 , O'Regan interrogates the demand and
supply relationships that have resulted in a highly fragmented marketplace on the one hand, but
a largely undifferentiated set of marketing activities on the other. Whilst technologies offer
marketing opportunities to engage with niche segments more from the bottom up, there are also
challenges, which O'Regan outlines. One of the most important aspects of tourist decision
making is the information search process. Travellers seek information as an essential element of
their trip experience. Therefore the range, type and channels or sources of information are
particularly relevant for successful outcomes for travellers. Information holds the key to success
for tourism businesses. The ubiquitous-ness of the Internet, both in fi xed locations and through
mobile devices, has meant that information search processes are becoming more fl exible
and fl uid. This is the essential argument proposed by Zheng Xiang, Choe and Fesemaier in
Chapter 21 . They synthesize a review of literature on information search in tourism, including
the factors that infl uence search behaviour, and online information search. The authors provide
a comprehensive analysis of the implications of this paradigm shift in information processes for
tourism marketing in the future.
Focusing in on decision processes in detail, Correia, Kozak and Tão ( Chapter 22 ) hone in on
a critical discussion of decision making models and research. Despite decades of research and the
development of complex models of tourist decisions, from a fundamental perspective, these
efforts can be criticized since they do not include psychological factors. This is a crucial problem
since, as many chapters in this volume mention, tourism involves emotion as well as cognition.
Affect, alongside intuition and perception, has a role to play in decision making for tourism
and Correia, Kozak and Tão outline the main aspects of prospect theory, and explain how it
complements, and yet extends the ability of classical models of tourist decision-making. They
argue that prospect theory offers a great deal of potential for tourism marketing research. Tourist
decision making models should acknowledge that decisions are dynamic and risky, constrained
by individual and social contexts of tourists, from which emotional and cognitive factors play a
role in the fi nal choice.
Chapter 23 focuses on destination choice and selection, particularly to advanced methods for
estimating preferences in selection processes. Chunxiao Li, in agreement with Correia, Kozak
and Tão, identifi es that there has been little consideration in the tourism literature for the
conceptual foundation on which decision making research is based. She reviews the literature on
different methodological assumptions through a focus on destination decision making. In
addressing the issue of the question of the importance of different destination attributes, Li
reviews simple and multiple regression approaches with Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP),
which allow paired comparisons of attributes that more closely matches consumer's processes.
However, these methods are only useful to a certain extent and in order to understand how
attributes are considered, we need to understand the choice heuristics applied in the process. To
do that, Li compares conjoint approaches with a novel approach called greedoid methods. This
can be used to explore lexicographic choice heuristics and offers potential to understand tourist
choice processes.
Micromarketing perspectives
Part 6 of the topic focuses on micromarketing issues. In this section there are six chapters. Firstly,
in Chapter 24 , Stickdorn returns us to the co-creation of experience. Customer experience is