Get 20M+ Full-Text Papers For Less Than $1.50/day. Start a 14-Day Trial for You or Your Team.

Learn More →

Factors influencing cruise vacations: the impact of online reviews and environmental friendliness

Factors influencing cruise vacations: the impact of online reviews and environmental friendliness The purpose of the study was to discover the relative importance of influencing factors toward booking a cruise vacation. Based on a review of literature, this study focused on exploring the relative importance of six influential factors in cruise customers’ decision-making process: cruise vacation price, cruise duration, distance from the cruise port, itineraries, environmental friendliness of cruise line and cruise online reviews.Design/methodology/approachThe complexity of cruise customers’ decision-making process for involving these six attributes with several levels was examined with choice-based conjoint (CBC) analysis. CBC was selected due to its realistic approach to purchase decisions, in the form of trade-offs. The online survey collected data anonymously. The survey was distributed through Amazon’s Mechanical Turk (Mturk) platform. The sample consisted of 450 cruise customers, who had experienced a cruise vacation before.FindingsThe findings of the study showed that online reviews were the most influential attribute for cruise customers in their cruise decision, followed very closely by the environmental friendliness of the cruise line. The next influential factor was the duration of the cruise vacation, which was followed by distance from the cruise port, cruise itinerary and cruise vacation price. The best and the worst cruise vacation profiles were generated based on the CBC analysis.Practical implicationsThe findings of this study provide some insights with regard to cruise customers’ importance about influencing factors when deciding on a cruise vacation.Originality/valueThe research provides insides in understanding the influential factors at the last stage of cruise customers’ decision-making process. In this regard, cruise industry can pay more attention in promoting the attributes of a cruise offer as influential factors. Additionally, the findings of this study contribute to the general knowledge about cruise customers’ decision-making process. http://www.deepdyve.com/assets/images/DeepDyve-Logo-lg.png Tourism Review Emerald Publishing

Factors influencing cruise vacations: the impact of online reviews and environmental friendliness

Download PDF
16 pages

Loading next page...
 
/lp/emerald-publishing/factors-influencing-cruise-vacations-the-impact-of-online-reviews-and-C62gmTvzi2
Publisher
Emerald Publishing
Copyright
© Emerald Publishing Limited
ISSN
1660-5373
DOI
10.1108/tr-12-2017-0207
Publisher site
See Article on Publisher Site

Abstract

The purpose of the study was to discover the relative importance of influencing factors toward booking a cruise vacation. Based on a review of literature, this study focused on exploring the relative importance of six influential factors in cruise customers’ decision-making process: cruise vacation price, cruise duration, distance from the cruise port, itineraries, environmental friendliness of cruise line and cruise online reviews.Design/methodology/approachThe complexity of cruise customers’ decision-making process for involving these six attributes with several levels was examined with choice-based conjoint (CBC) analysis. CBC was selected due to its realistic approach to purchase decisions, in the form of trade-offs. The online survey collected data anonymously. The survey was distributed through Amazon’s Mechanical Turk (Mturk) platform. The sample consisted of 450 cruise customers, who had experienced a cruise vacation before.FindingsThe findings of the study showed that online reviews were the most influential attribute for cruise customers in their cruise decision, followed very closely by the environmental friendliness of the cruise line. The next influential factor was the duration of the cruise vacation, which was followed by distance from the cruise port, cruise itinerary and cruise vacation price. The best and the worst cruise vacation profiles were generated based on the CBC analysis.Practical implicationsThe findings of this study provide some insights with regard to cruise customers’ importance about influencing factors when deciding on a cruise vacation.Originality/valueThe research provides insides in understanding the influential factors at the last stage of cruise customers’ decision-making process. In this regard, cruise industry can pay more attention in promoting the attributes of a cruise offer as influential factors. Additionally, the findings of this study contribute to the general knowledge about cruise customers’ decision-making process.

Journal

Tourism Review – Emerald Publishing

Published: Jun 19, 2019

Keywords: Environment; Conjoint analysis; Influencing factor; Cruise vacation

References

  • Consumer perceptions of sustainability in the cruise industry
    Ackerman, L.M.
  • Role of corporate social and environmental responsibility in cruise consumers’ behavior decision making
    Adams, S.A.
  • Country-of-origin and Brand effects on consumers’ evaluations of cruise lines
    Ahmed, Z.U.; Johnson, J.P.; Pei Ling, C.; Wai Fang, T.; Kah Hui, A.
  • Evaluating online labor markets for experimental research: Amazon. com’s mechanical Turk
    Berinsky, A.J.; Huber, G.A.; Lenz, G.S.
  • A cruise ship is not a floating hotel
    Biehn, N.
  • Cruise tourism: economic, socio-cultural and environmental impacts
    Brida, J.G.; Zapata, S.
  • Why do people read reviews posted on consumer-opinion portals?
    Burton, J.; Khammash, M.
  • Online and off‐line travel packages preferences: a conjoint analysis
    Chiam, M.; Soutar, G.; Yeo, A.
  • Consumer trends 2014: the growing influence of TripAdvisor
    Chipkin, H.
  • Using conjoint analysis to design financial services
    Christian Zinkhan, F.; Zinkhan, G.M.
  • The overview spring 2005
  • One voice: advancing our industry together
  • 2015 Cruise industry outlook
  • 2016 Travel agent cruise industry outlook
  • 2016 Travel agent cruise industry outlook
  • 2016 Travel agent cruise industry outlook
  • 2016 Cruise industry outlook
  • 2017 State of the industry
  • About the industry
  • Planning the summer vacation: an adaptable process
    Decrop, A.; Snelders, D.; , 3.
  • Logistic regression analysis of cruise vacation market potential: demographic and trip attribute perception factors
    De La Vina, L.; Ford, J.
  • Multi-faceted tourist travel decisions: a constraint-based conceptual framework to describe tourists’ sequential choices of travel components
    Dellaert, B.G.; Ettema, D.F.; Lindh, C.
  • Students’ preferences for university: a conjoint analysis
    Geoffrey, N.S.; Julia, P.T.
  • Determinants of length of stay: a practical use of survival analysis
    Gokovali, U.; Bahar, O.; Kozak, M.
  • Cruise travelers’ environmentally responsible decision-making: an integrative framework of goal-directed behavior and norm activation process
    Han, H.; Hwang, J.
  • The relationship between vacation factors and sociodemographic and travelling characteristics: the case of Japanese leisure travelers
    Heung, V.C.; Qu, H.; Chu, R.
  • Do customers care about types of hotel service recovery efforts? an example of consumer-generated review sites
    Jeong, M.; Lee, S.A.
  • Initial scale development: sample size for pilot studies
    Johanson, G.A.; Brooks, G.P.
  • Taiwanese cruise tourist behavior during different phases of experience
    Juan, P.J.; Chen, H.M.; , 1.
  • How do consumers process online hotel reviews? The effects of eWOM consensus and sequence
    Kim, E.; , E.; , K.; Lee, C.; , H.
  • Responsible cruise tourism: issues of cruise tourism and sustainability
    Klein, R.A.
  • What makes a useful online review? Implication for travel product websites
    Liu, Z.; Park, S.
  • Perceptions of cruise line sustainability
    Lusby, C.; Ackerman, L.
  • Conducting behavioral research on amazon’s mechanical turk
    Mason, W.; Suri, S.
  • An empirical comparison of CBC and AHP for measuring consumer preferences
    Meißner, M.; Decker, R.
  • Consumer behaviour in tourism
    Moutinho, L.
  • Radisson seven seas triumphs, winning conde nast traveler’s award 2013
    Murray, B.
  • The origin of cruises
    Nikerk, I.J.
  • From e-tourism to f-tourism: emerging issues from negative tourists’ online reviews
    Pantano, E.; Di Pietro, L.
  • Cruise tourism management: state of the art
    Papathanassis, A.
  • Assessing the ‘poverty of cruise theory’ hypothesis
    Papathanassis, A.; Beckmann, I.
  • The effect of on-line consumer reviews on consumer purchasing intention: the moderating role of involvement
    Park, D.H.; Lee, J.; Han, I.
  • Cruise passengers’ decision-making processes
    Petrick, J.F.; Li, X.; Park, S.Y.
  • Conducting web-based surveys
    Solomon, D.J.
  • The effect of environmentally friendly perceptions on festival visitors’ decision-making process using an extended model of goal-directed behavior
    Song, H.J.; Lee, C.K.; Kang, S.K.; Boo, S.J.
  • Electronic word-of-mouth and online reviews in tourism services: the use of twitter by tourists
    Sotiriadis, M.D.; Van Zyl, C.
  • Preferences and trip expenditures – a conjoint analysis of visitors to Seoul, Korea
    Suh, Y.K.; Gartner, W.C.
  • Marketing research and revenue optimization for the cruise industry: a concise review
    Sun, X.; Jiao, Y.; Tian, P.
  • Room occupancies: cruise lines out-do the hotels
    Toh, R.S.; Rivers, M.J.; Ling, T.W.
  • The importance of pilot studies
    Van Teijlingen, E.; Hundley, V.
  • Range and number-of-levels effects in derived and stated measures of attribute importance
    Verlegh, P.W.; Schifferstein, H.N.; Wittink, D.R.
  • Cruise tourism: emerging issues and implications for a maturing industry
    Weeden, C.; Lester, J.A.; Thyne, M.
  • Forecasting tourism demand: a review of empirical research
    Witt, S.F.; Witt, C.A.
  • The attributes of a cruise ship that influence the decision making of cruisers and potential cruisers
    Xie, H.J.; Kerstetter, D.L.; Mattila, A.S.
  • Consumer preferences for internet services: a Choice-Based conjoint study
    Zhu, Q.
  • Deciding factors
  • Attitude determinants in tourism destination choice
    Um, S.; Crompton, J.L.
  • Consumer research on tourism mental and behavioral constructs
    Van Raaij, W.F.