Exploring travelers’ decision-making styles

Abstract

Purpose The purpose of this study is to profile market segments using travelers’ decision-making styles (DMS) as segmentation bases and to identify similarities and differences between traveler segments regarding a series of psychographic and attitudinal characteristics. Design/methodology/approach Data are gathered from a sample of 426 travelers in Dubai and Shanghai via self-reported surveys. Analyses included factor, k-means cluster, discriminant and MANOVA. Findings Study findings reveal significant differences among the rational, adaptive and daydreamer decision-makers’ segments in their behavioral and attitudinal characteristics with respect to tourism involvement and destination images. Practical implications Findings provide important practical implications for generating effective marketing and positioning strategies based on the identified attitudinal characteristics of the traveler segments for destination marketing organizations. Originality/value A stream of recent tourism studies shows a strong relationship between tourism involvement and destination images, yet very little research has tackled the issue of how these critical variables can be affected by individuals’ decision-making styles. This study explores and tests the relationships among DMS, tourism involvement and destination image using a factor-cluster approach.