Do Tourists' Motives Alter Based on What They See on E-Sources of Information? An SEM Approach to Determine the Impact
Branding and Marketing; Destination; Esources; Information; Motives; Tourists
With growing competition in the tourism industry and changing tourists' expectations, motives and behavior, marketers are at the outset to promote, position and brand their tourism destinations lucratively. Though there are many allied themes on destination branding and marketing arena, tourists' motives have been widely looked up as research emphasis the dynamic revamps being seen with the intervention of digital sources of information. However, research at this aspect is at gradual phase. This paper focuses on such a theme and tries to understand the significant impact of tourists' behavior towards esources of information on their motives. Literary sources have been analyzed and hypothesis has been formulated. To test the assumption, the research location has been chosen - a district in Tamil Nadu state which serves wide range of tourists' motives and bestowed with distinct tourism attractions. A Structured questionnaire containing the necessary items measuring the study factors has been floated to 422 tourists through convenient sampling technique. However, 327 have been rounded as the final sample after excluding the illegible responses. Three Stage Analysis has been performed where Exploratory Factor Analysis (EFA) has been sued for data reduction and exploring the new factors, Confirmatory Factor Analysis (CFA) has been used for identifying and confirming the individual models and Structural Equation Modelling (SEM) has been used for understanding the structural relationship between the factors. Model fit has been found for CFA and SEM. Significant impact has been found by tourists' behavior towards the esources of information on tourists' motives. Simple Percentage Analysis (SPA) has been used to analyze the distribution of respondents based on their personal factors. Suggestions to the marketers and policy makers have been provided through managerial implications. Theoretical recommendations have also been narrated. Copyright IJHTS.
International Journal of Hospitality and Tourism Systems, Vol-16, No. 3, pp. 1-11.
Shankar S.R., Symbiosis Institute of Business Management (SIBM), Karnataka, Bangalore, India; Mathew S.K., Department of Management, Musaliar College of Engineering and Technology, Kerala, Pathanamthitta, India; Koshy E.R., Department of Professional Studies, Christ University, Karnataka, India