Customer value management as a determinant of the competitive position of tourism destinationsPechlaner, Harald; Smeral, Egon; Matzier, Kurt
2002 Tourism Review
doi: 10.1108/eb058390
Destinations are strategic marketing units which consist of territorially delimited, consolidated areas of cooperation. Options to improve a destination's competitive edge depend on the determinants of competitiveness. A destination's competitive position can be explained by factor conditions and conditions of demand, quality and structure of sectors involved, strategies as well as market and organizational structures. The competitive system depicted above forms the basis for the creation of customer value and therefore is a source of future competitive advantages. Customer value is the gap perceived by the customer between the perceived multidimensional benefit and the perceived multidimensional costsprices of a destination compared to its competitors. The aim of the article is the explanation of Customer Value Management as a key strategy to affect a destination's competitive position by means of supplyside measures as well as the communicated and achievable relative consumptioncost position.
Swiss travel market aspects of consumer behaviour in an aging travel marketBieger, Thomas; Laesser, Christian
2002 Tourism Review
doi: 10.1108/eb058391
Switzerland with its seven million inhabitants, of which 20,1 BfS 2001 are nonSwiss citizens, ranks among the top seven nations with respect of income per capita. Due to its wealth as well as its small size, the travel intensity of Switzerland is comparably high. Because it always had a tradition of neutrality and liberal political positions, freedom of travel was guaranteed for generations. Since Switzerland hasn't been drawn into World War 2, the emergence of the new dynamic of travel took place early in the fifties. Switzerland therefore is a kind of very developed travel market. According to the WTO statistics, Switzerland ranks among the top tourist buyer countries cp. WTO 2001. The Institute of Public Services and Tourism at the University of St.Callen former Institute for Transport and Tourism has been conducting a survey on the travel behaviour of Swiss customers for more then thirty years cp. Bieger & Laesser 2002. On a regular base of every second to third year, a representative consumer panels of 2000 households is interviewed by written questionnaires. The Swiss travel market proves a high validity in comparisons with the official Swiss statistical figures for travel, with one small limit The number of travels intensity is underestimated due to the fact that people tend to undervalue the number of travels to their usual destinations like second homes. The goal of this contribution is to give an overview on the travel behaviour of Swiss customers as example for a well developed country. This will be done in two parts. Part 1 is featuring some descriptive main results, concerning the development and structure of the overall travellers. Part 2 consists of two papers, done by Ph.D students in a seminar taught by the authors of this contribution at the University of St. Gallen. These two articles give a deeper insight into some aspects of travel behaviour.
Review of the concept of travel typologies The case of SwitzerlandGraf, Luca; Ossig, Christine
2002 Tourism Review
doi: 10.1108/eb058392
The study aims at reviewing the concept of travel typologies. For this purpose the two determination factors explaining travel behavior, motivation and destination choice, are chosen to verify the validity of travel typologies. The study is based on an extensive and representative travel survey covering almost 2,000 households and more than 12,000 trips within Switzerland. Generally, travel typologies seem to be a valuable instrument for the tourism industry to anticipate consumer behavior and to plan marketing activities appropriately. The results reveal that there is no clear and highly significant connection between travel typologies and the selected determination factors. As a conclusion, the concept of travel typologies seems to be not reliable.
Segmentation of the Swiss travel market by holiday activitiesAmmann, Paul A; Bischof, Lukas; Schalcher, Felix
2002 Tourism Review
doi: 10.1108/eb058393
This study attempts to segment the Swiss travel market based on holiday activities. It is based on data of the 2001 travel market in Switzerland. Cluster and discriminant analysis have been employed in order to segment the data and to explain the differences between the clusters. Hereby, five activityclusters could be defined, each representing a set of holiday activities most likely to be exercised. The analysis of the five clusters revealed that two demographic profile variables occupation and size of household did explain the affiliation to a certain cluster. The same could be found for the following travel profile variables destination and duration of the trip, total number of participants from a household and type of trip. Further research will be necessary to find out if the clusters identified really do fulfil the needed criteria for market segments in order to be used by companies in the travel industry.