Two Means to the Same End: Hierarchical Value Maps in Tourism—Comparing the Association Pattern Technique with Direct Importance Ratings
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Zins, Andreas H. [1]
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[1] Vienna University of Economics and Business Administration
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- Localización: Tourism analysis, ISSN 1083-5423, Vol. 5, Nº. 2-4, 2000, págs. 119-123
- Idioma: inglés
- Texto completo no disponible (Saber más ...)
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Resumen
Gaining insight into the consumer’s value-creating processes and structures is a crucial and complex task for marketing managers. In service industries this exercise becomes more difficult because there are fewer tangible product elements to act as substitutional cues for the consumer to anticipate the favorable or unfavorable overall value of alternatives. The means-end chain approach has been proven to be a valuable instrument to uncover how product attributes are linked to the consumer’s personality. This research technique, though rarely applied in the field of tourism, promises to shed light onto spots of cognitive processes that are still in the gray zone of the abundant service quality and motivational approaches. Therefore, this study investigates the relationships between product attributes, consequences from pleasure travel experiences, and personal values. Comparing the hierarchical value maps derived from correlation analyses (CA) and the association pattern technique (APT), it can be demonstrated that: (1) the latter methodology is not only suited for standardized “mass" interviewing, but highlights (2) a dense net of associations reflecting the traveler’s cognitive value map in a more consistent way than correlations from direct importance ratings.
