Purchasing vacation packages through shop-at-home television programs: An analysis of consumers' consumption motives

Abstract

In most developed countries non-store retailing, especially shop-at-home television, has grown in importance and today's consumers have access to a wider and more diverse range of in-home shopping media than ever before. Not surprisingly non-store shopping behavior has increasingly been recognized as an important field of investigation. While previous research focused on shopper demographics and low-involvement products, relatively little is known about why consumers purchase products through shop-at-home television and a knowledge gap exists in understanding shop-at-home consumer behavior toward complex, high-involvement services such as vacation travel. Adopting a choice motivation typology as a framework, the present study investigates the booking motives of shop-at-home travel television program viewers using a sample of 978 consumers. Based on exploratory and confirmatory factor analysis, four motive factors for the willingness to purchase vacation packages via shop-at-home travel television programs were found, and subsequent cluster analyses identified four significant and distinct buyer groups. Implications for travel-marketing practice and research are discussed.