Destination Holiday Essay: Purchase Decision Making Process In Australia.

Prior Research

Write an essay on Destination Holiday Purchase Decision Making Process In Australia.

Touristic products are usually complex and highly diversified, making it quite difficult for marketers to coordinate the related marketing mix components and achieve a concrete and unified image. The complex and multi-layered nature of the tourist product necessitates a complex decision making process, since the tourist purchases the entire experience, rather than the individual elements in the defined product. In choosing the holiday destination to purchase, the consumer has to determine whether to travel and answer questions such as where, when to travel, how long, what to do and how much to spent. Marketers are mostly concerned with the tourist’s decisions concerning where to stay, which essentially relates to the internal and external factors influencing the visitor’s decisions in choosing the holiday destination to visit. This paper investigates the nature of consumer decision-making processes in making holiday destination purchases in the Australian market and its implications for tourism marketers.

There has been extensive literature investigating destination choice that focus on the holiday choice behaviors, such as, the image of the destination, the motivation and the factors influencing the decision-making processes. In their model, Clawson and Knetch (2013) conceptualized five stages in the travel purchase decision-making process.  These stages begin with anticipation, which involves critical thinking and careful planning of the trip. The next stage is travelling, where the visitor actually moves to the destination. The third stage behavior or experience of the visitor at the destination. The fourth stage is return travel that entails the visitor coming back home. The final stage is the recollection, where the visitor recalls, memorizes, reflects and evaluates the overall travel experience.  

In his model, Gunn identified seven stages that influence the consumer decision process while choosing a leisure travel experience (Hanlan, Fuller & Wilde, 2006). These stages include mental visualization of the destination experience, modification of images through gathering of information, making the decision to take a trip, travelling to the destination, experiencing the destination, travelling back, accumulation of new images based on the experience (Hanlan, Fuller & Wilde, 2006).

Clearly, the decision process to visit a specific location in Australia begins with the travelers pre-conceived notions and images about the specific destination gathered from a wide array of sources. Since destination holidays are usually expensive and require a lot of travel, the consumer engages in extensive research to modify and validate previous knowledge held on the destination. An interesting fact is that the consumer also engages in a re-evaluation, re-modification and alteration of the images during the post-purchase reflections of the experience (Huang & Gross, 2010). Therefore, it emerges that the consumer engages in multi-faceted and subjective processes while making decisions concerning the choice of the destination. According to Fuller et al. (2005), a major factor determining choice of destination relates to the image that a set of available alternatives projects and the ability of the perceived image to satisfy the tourist needs.

Holiday Destination Decision-making Process

Woodside and Lysonski (1989) developed a general framework for understanding the influence of perceptions and consumer preferences on the process of choosing a holiday destination. The model suggests that the destination choice commences from a set of complex implicit and explicit decisions starting from destination awareness, which gives rise to destination preferences and informs travel intention.

According to Woodside and Lysonski (1989), the tourist’s destination preferences are shaped by the traveler’s variables, affective associations, marketing variables and awareness of the destination.   These variables are discussed below in depth.

The tourist’s motivation to travel to a given destination is influences by a range of travelers variables, including the previous experience of the destination, value system, income, age, life style and life cycle. All these motivators have an influence on the individual’s decision to take a holiday, and to choose the specific destination to go to at any given time. For instance, people are attracted and motivated to visit a specific destination due to a number of factors, including theme parks, museums, art galleries, golf course and leisure shopping experiences. Australia is an interesting tourist destination due to the wide range of variables that motivate the consumers. Australia has natural attractions, friendly people, friendly language and culture, and high safety. Some of the attractive features include the Outback, Ayers Rock/ Uluru, kangaroos, Aboriginal culture and the Great Barrier Reef, among others (Murphy, 2000).

 According to Woodside and Lysonski (1989) model, the decision to visit Australia is simply a function of the decision processes leading to preferences of alternative destinations. People tend to have different preferences for different locations and regions due to specific affective associations. Affective associations are specific feelings that the visitor relates towards the various holiday destinations. The preferences for different destinations are also influenced by the individual factors of the travelers, such as motivation, values, attitudes and previous perceptions or images of the destination. People would just visit Australia because of its beautiful beaches, museums, scenery, warm sun, cultural diversity and quality restaurants. Consumers develop positive affective associations for the destinations that they would like to visit and negative affective associations for destinations they would not plan to visit.  

Travelers establish destination preferences based on their destination awareness. Woodside and Lysonski (1989) established four categories for destination awareness, namely, consideration set, insert set, unavailable/aware set and inept set. Consumer’s awareness of the destination falls in one of the aforementioned sets. The inept set is the reject category, which although the consumer is aware of it, will not consider travelling to the destination due to negative perception arising from wrong information or negative past experiences. The inert set comprises categories of destinations the tourist is aware about but exhibits ambivalent attitude, implying that they have neither positive nor negative perceptions about it. In most cases, such consumers do not have adequate and relevant information to make informed assessments and decisions towards selection of the locations are their choice holiday destinations.

Traveler’s Variables

In the unavailable/ aware set, the tourist happens to be aware of the existence of the destination but is unable to make purchase decision due to geographical, cost, financial and legal obstacles. Finally, the consideration sets are categories of holiday destinations that the tourist is aware and is planning to purchase them based on their perceived ability to meet and exceed their recreational needs (Hanlan, Fuller and Wilde, 2005). In a study on the holiday destination choice in Australia, Pike (2006) reported existence of a general consistency between the tourist attitude and the actual behavior. Hence, marketers of Australian holiday destinations could attain competitive advantage through positioning their offers in the customers destination set.

Woodside and Lysonski (1989) identified marketing variables as important influencers on destination awareness. The marketing variables include product design, place, promotion and channel decisions. Destination marketing organizations can manipulate the marketing variables to create the desired effect, influence the traveler destination decision-making process, create positive affective associations and actualize the intention to visit. It is imperative for destination marketing organizations in Australia to design the marketing mix programs in such a way to target a clear market niche that would move the specific destinations into traveler’s consideration set (Hanlan, Fuller & Wilde, 2006). Incidentally, travelers to Australian holiday destination would only consider destinations with properly designed product, offered at an appropriate price, marketed effectively and sold through proper channels. It is imperative to design the marketing mix variables in a strategic way to position the holiday destination to meet and exceed the expectation of the consumers and influence potential travelers to choose the destination (Hanlan, Fuller & Wilde, 2006).

While consumers may have an intention to visit, the actual destination selected may differ from the intended destination due to situational variables. According to Mohsin (2005), despite the existence of the favorable intention to visit Australia, existence of structural factors may inhibit the actual behavior of the destination consumers. Unfortunately, a few studies have been conducted to identify the relationship between the stated intention to visit and the actual visiting behavior (Pike, 2006). According to Oppewal, Huybers and Crouch (2010) existence of situational variables may alter the tourist’s initial intention to visit a specific destination. A number of factors may lead to a change in tourist’s intentions to choose Australia as their holiday destination.

 The situational variables include external factors that may have substantial influence on the tourist’s decisions. These variables include the influence of the media, social, cultural, technological and political concerns the national level and the international or global sphere. Political factors have a strong bearing on the tourist’s decision to visit Australia. Incidences of terrorisms, changes in government policy and legislation to deny or restrict visa and immigration, dictatorial government system, taxation policy and tourisms taxes, may reduce the actual visit of the tourists even though they have the intention to choose destinations in Australia (Benckendorff, Moscardo & Pendergast, 2010). The authors opine that a range of the aforementioned external situational factors may influence the actual choice of the holiday destination and the nature of activities that the visitors engage in once they travel to the country. For instance, assuming a family had made plans to visit Australia for their destination holiday. The family may even secured a visa and arranged for air travel when the media broke out with the news for the possible outbreak of influenza epidemic in Queensland (Skinner & Hinchliffe, 2015).  To avoid the possible effect of the infection, the family may choose to go to another holiday destination that was the next possible location in their available alternatives. In this scenario, there is clearly an intention to visit Australia, but the situational factors make it impossible for the family to undertake an actual visit to Australia.

Conclusion

An understanding of the factors affecting destination purchase decisions is necessary in designing appropriate marketing mix. In this report, it has been argued that the ability of the destination attributes to exceed traveler expectations, affective associations and the various situational factors influences the choice of destination that the user visits. Since the purchase of holiday destination is a costly expenditure and involves huge risks, travelers tend to be involved significantly and assume a subjective and multi-faceted approach.  Careful segmentation of the travelers and targeting them with the appropriate marketing mix programs would ensure attainment of competitive advantage for destination marketing organizations in Australia.  

References

Benckendorff, P., Moscardo, G. and Pendergast, D. eds., 2010. Tourism and generation Y. Cabi.

Clawson, M. and Knetsch, J.L., 2013. Economics of outdoor recreation (Vol. 3). Routledge.

Fuller, D., Armstrong, B., Hanlan, J., Wilde, S.J., Mason, S. and Edelheim, J.R., 2005. Destination choice-visitor behaviours in a coastal tourism destination on Australia’s east coast.

Hanlan, J., Fuller, D. and Wilde, S., 2006. Destination decision making: the need for a strategic planning and management approach. Tourism and Hospitality Planning & Development, 3(3), pp.209-221.

Hanlan, J., Fuller, D. and Wilde, S.J., 2005. The travel destination decision process and the relevance of segmentation studies to the marketing of regional tourism destinations in an Australian context. School of Commerce and Management Papers, p.154.

Huang, S. and Gross, M.J., 2010. Australia's destination image among mainland Chinese travelers: An exploratory study. Journal of Travel & Tourism Marketing, 27(1), pp.63-81.

Mohsin, A., 2005. Tourist attitudes and destination marketing—the case of Australia's Northern Territory and Malaysia. Tourism Management, 26(5), pp.723-732.

Murphy, L., 2000. Australia's image as a holiday destination-Perceptions of backpacker visitors. Journal of Travel & Tourism Marketing, 8(3), pp.21-45.

Oppewal, H., Huybers, T. and Crouch, G.I., 2010. How Do Australians Choose Holiday Destinations and Experiences?: Modelling Consumer Choice. CRC for Sustainable Tourism.

Pike, S., 2006. Destination decision sets: A longitudinal comparison of stated destination preferences and actual travel. Journal of Vacation Marketing, 12(4), pp.319-328.

Skinner, J. & Hinchliffe, J., 2015. Queensland on brink of influenza epidemic, doctors fear. ABC News[Online] Available at: 

Woodside, A.G. and Lysonski, S., 1989. A general model of traveler destination choice. Journal of travel Research, 27(4), pp.8-14.