Comment

Comment by 陳老頭 on May 19, 2022 at 8:17pm

According to Oppermann [2000] there are various alternatives for measuring a tourist’s loyalty. First, loyalty can be measured through behaviour, by considering repeat purchasing. Secondly, it can be measured through attitude, analysing the tourist’s predisposition towards the tourism destination. Finally a composite measure is proposed, which integrates behaviour and attitude, considering that the tourist must have positive attitude and behaviour towards a destination for it to be considered true loyalty.
Loyalty is a concept related closely to customer satisfaction, and there is even a consensus that a high degree of satisfaction results in loyal customers. This makes loyalty the central concept of marketing and any discussion of it must take into account the elements involved in the process of its formation, such as customer satisfaction [Petrick and Backman 2002, Baker and Crompton 2000: 178] and brand image [Bigne’ et al. 2001: 68].
For marketing implications, the model of Fishbein and Ajzen [1975] suggests that attitudinal loyalty towards the tourism destination is directly and positively affected by the the image of the tourism destination. According to this model, a particular behaviour is determined by a single attitude. An attitude towards an object may determine different behaviours, such as the repetition of the visit, word of mouth or complaints. The attitude, in turn, is determined by beliefs, are image and satisfaction. Image and satisfaction indirectly influence behavioural loyalty through attitudinal loyalty.
The Effect of Service Quality on Customer Satisfaction and Loyalty: in tourism context there is a strong relationship between the customer satisfaction, loyalty and service quality. According to Dimanche and Havitz [1994] , quality of service is generally assumed to affect business performance and loyalty in a positive way. Hurley and Hooman [1998] point out that perception of service quality affect feelings of satisfaction, which will then affect loyalty and future buying decisions.
Service quality is linked to six performance indicators according to PIMS (Profit Impact of Marketing Strategies) database which contains information about strategy and performance on 2600 business worldwide: (1) customer loyalty, (2) repeat purchases, (3) reduced vulnerability to price wars, (4) ability to command high relative price without affecting market share, (5) lower marketing costs, and (6) market share improvements.
Some people prefer repeat visitation to the same destination, whereas others prefer to try some new place every time however, repeat purchase is crucial component for contemprary marketing in order to be successful. According to Markin [1969] prior satisfaction with a vacation destination may lead to repeat purchases. Also Cronin and Taylor [1992] suggested that customer satisfaction affected repurchase intent significantly. Reichheld and Sasser [1990] and Shoemaker and Lewis [1999] arrange the benefits of repeat purchase as (1) attracting previous customers is more cost-effective than gaining new ones; (2) 5% increase in customer retention could increase profit by 25–85%; and (3) customer retention tends to yield positive word-of-mouth referral.

Comment by 陳老頭 on April 17, 2022 at 6:10pm

（Con't）Also, Jones and Sasser [1995] used the customers’ stated intent to repurchase a product as a measure of the behavioural component of loyalty. They argued that intent to repurchase is a very strong indicator of future behaviour. Assael [1995] reported on a range of studies that were conducted which supported the view that intentions could be used to predict overt behaviour. In addition, Gitelson and Crompton [1984] pointed out that although satisfaction with a particular destination appears to be a necessary condition for explaining much repeat visitation, it is not sufficient to explain the phenomenon since many respondents reported satisfactory experiences and yet did not return to the same destination.They also suggested that there were five factors that can motivate repeat visitation:

1. it reduces the risk of an unsatisfactory experience;
2. there is an assurance that they would find their ‘kind of people’;
3. an emotional childhood attachment;
4. to experience some aspects of the destination which had been omitted on a previous occasion;
5. to expose others to the satisfactory experiences that tourists had previously.

As parallel with these explanations Witt and Witt [1995] suggested why people paid repeat visit to a destination: once people have been on holiday to a particular country and liked it, they tend to return to that destination. Similarly, Oppermann [1998] argued, ‘if tourists were happy with the previous (or even the immediate past) destination choice, they may not even look for information on other destinations for their next destination selections’. These arguments suggest that previous experience with a destination may affect the intention and the actual decision to revisit it.

Comment by 陳老頭 on April 17, 2022 at 6:10pm

At the level of the economy as a whole and for the individual attraction, repeat visits in tourism have also been accepted as an important phenomenon [Darnell and Johnson 2001: 122]. In addition, many travel destinations rely heavily on repeat visitors [Darnell and Johnson 2001, Gitelson and Crompton 1984: 158]. Many studies in recent years have focused on the antecedents of destination revisit intention to understand why travelers make repeat visits. As a result of these studies, major antecedents of revisit intention are satisfaction, quality related constructs, perceived value, past vacation experience, safety, image, attachment, and cultural difference.

According to Oppermann [1999], time is significant in tourist retention and loyalty because “time firstly plays a role in identifying appropriate time intervals during which a purchase may or may not take place’’. Darnell and Johnson [2001] also noted the significance of temporal viewpoint to destination management, indicating, ‘‘the time profile of repeat visiting has important implications for visit flows.’’ The study of Baloğlu and Erickson [1998] also showed that most international travelers to one destination are more likely to switch to another destination for their next trip, but many of them hope to revisit the same destinations in the future. However, their explanation on revisit intentions reflects the two implicit assumptions of former rerearches [Highes 1995, Schmidhauser 1976, Woodside and MacDonald 1994: 96]: (1) revisit intention lapses over time; and (2) the strength of revisit intention tends to be constant once it is created. The first assumption which argues revisit intention lapses over time is implied by the recency-frequency-monetary value (RFM) paradigm. It is one of the essential operational principles for many loyalty building programs [Hughes 1995: 75]. According to RFM paradigm individuals who buy one’s product more recently, more frequently, and spend more money are more likely to repurchase or respond to an incentive to repurchase. Furthermore, the notion of recency indicates that recent customers tend to repurchase and that the strength of their repurchasing intention will decrease over time.

The second assumption is closely related with tourist typologies. There are two distinct tourist segments according to Woodside and MacDonald [1994]: first one is visitors returning to a destination due to familiarity and the other one is visitors not returning due to familiarity. Schmidhauser [1976] argued that there are, at least, two different types of tourists: continuous repeaters who choose the same destination over and over again and continuous switchers who do not come back even though they are satisfied with the destination in their current visit.

Comment by 陳老頭 on December 29, 2021 at 11:15am

（Con't）On the other hand, Gitelson and Crompton [1984] categorized repeat visitors into three subgroups: infrequent, frequent, and very frequent, however they did not specify the frequency of visits for each group. Oppermann [1999] discussed a conceptual typology as a function of multiple visits, based on a New Zealand resident data: somewhat loyal (infrequent), loyal (regular), and very loyal (annual and biannual); and further extended this typology to cover the entire population by introducing four other traveler types: non-purchasers, disillusioned, unstable, and disloyal.

According to Jones and Sasser [1995], in non-competitive markets, satisfaction has little impact on loyalty as the customers are captive customers without having choice. On the other hand, in competitive markets, there is great difference between the loyalty of “satisfied” and “completely satisfied” customers. Totally satisfied customers are more likely to repurchase products than merely satisfied customers [Jones and Sasser 1995: 129].

The Effect of Word-of Mouth Communication on Repurchase Intention: Word-of-communication is a powerful force on consumer behaviour in tourism. In tourism research, loyalty has been measured using two main indicators: willingness to recommend or word-of-mouth, and likelihood of return [Bigne’ et al. 2001, Chen and Gursoy 2001, Baloglu et al. 2003, Petrick 2004: 157]. Word-of-communication is defined by Anderson [1998] as informal communication between private parties concerning evaluations of goods and services. It is likely that satisfied visitors will come back and will tell others about their favourable or unfavourable experiences [Kozak 2001: 169]. Ashworth and Goodall [1988] observed that if a tourist is dissatisfied they will not recommend the destination to others. Word-of-mouth has more significant impact on tourist perceptions than other forms of mass communication since, it is the most effective communication for the tourism industry. When making purchase decision for services, consumers generally rely more heavily on verbal messages [Davis, Guiltman and Jones, 1979: 147]. According to Bateson [1995], consumers believe that personal sources provide the most adequate and up-to-date information. Moreover, word-of-mouth techniques are perceived as more credible and less biased [Lovelock 1991: 152]. Payne [1993] also suggested that dissatisfied customers tell more than two times as many people about their poor experiences than those who are satisfied.

CONCLUSIONS

Word-of-mouth communication behavior of customers is positively affected by high service quality [Bone 1992, Helm 2000, Harrison-Walker 2001: 136]. Positive word-of-mouth communication will attract new customers and, hence, lead to higher revenues. Therefore customer satisfaction is central for realizing profits. Moreover, extremely dissatisfied customers are even more likely to engage in word-of-mouth than satisfied customers [Anderson 1998, Harrison-Walker 2001: 114]. Negative word-of-mouth will probably lead to lower customer loyalty and negative consequences for the attraction of new customers. Past research further revealed that customer loyalty is positively related to word-of-mouth communication [Zeithaml et al. 1996, Harrison-Walker 2001: 133]. Not only loyal customers are satisfied with the service but also they feel attached to the service provider.

(TYPOLOGY OF TOURISTS AND THEIR SATISFACTION LEVEL，by Dr Renata Grzywacz，Dr Patrycja Żegleń，Wydział Wychowania Fizycznego & Uniwersytet Rzeszowski Source: https://www.researchgate.net)

BIBLIOGRAPHY （Please Refer to the Original Article）

 

Comment by 陳老頭 on December 19, 2021 at 10:16am

Erik Cohen·AUTHENTICITY AND COMMODITIZATION IN TOURISM

Abstract: Three basic assumptions, common in the literature on tourism, regarding "commodi-tization," "staged authenticity," and the inability of tourists to have authentic experiences are re-examined. Authenticity is conceived as a negotiable rather than primitive concept, the rigor of its definition by subjects depending on the mode of their aspired touristic experience. New cultural developments may also acquire the patina of authenticity over time— a process designated at "emergent authenticity." It is also argued that commoditization does not necessarily destroy the meaning of cultural products, although it may change it or add new meanings to old ones.

Conclusions contrary to the deductions following from the above assumptions are spelled out, and a new approach to the study of authenticity and meaning in tourism, which could help the formulation of a more discerning tourism policy, is advocated. Keywords: authenticity, commoditization, cultural tourism, tourist experience, tour-ism policy, tourist arts and crafts. （See next column）

Comment by 陳老頭 on December 19, 2021 at 10:15am

Erik Cohen is the George S. Wise Professor of Sociology (The Hebrew University of Jerusalem 91905, Israel). He has done sociological and anthropological research in Israel and Peru and a series of studies on tourism, urban life, Christianity, and social change in Thailand.

INTRODUCTION： Much of the contemporary literature on the nature of modern tour-ism and its impact upon host societies relies on several important assumptions. In a most general way, these assumptions can be formulated as follows:First, tourism is said to lead to "commoditization" (Greenwood, 1977) of areas in the life of a community which prior to its penetration by tourism have been within the domain of economic relations regulated by criteria of market exchange (cf. Appadurai 1986). Local culture generally serves as the principal example of such commoditization.

In particular, "colorful" local costumes and customs, rituals and feasts, and folk and ethnic arts become touristic services or commodities, as they come to be performed or produced for touristic consumption. Sexual services, in the form of tourist-oriented prostitution, are another major example of commoditization. The critical issue is that corn-moditization allegedly changes the meaning of cultural products and of human relations, making them eventually meaningless: "We already know from world-wide experience that local culture . . . is altered and often destroyed by the treatment of it as a touristic attraction. It is made meaningless to the people who once believed in it . . . ",(Green-wood 1977:131). Furthermore, according to the same sourq, since local culture can be commoditized by anyone, without the consent of the participants (1977:137), it can be expropriated, and the local people exploited.

Second, commoditization is said to destroy the authenticity of local cultural products and human relations; instead a surrogate, covert "staged authenticity" (MacCannell 1973) emerges. As cultural products lose their meaning for the locals, and as the need to present the tourist with ever more spectacular, exotic and titillating attractions grows (Boorstin 1964:103),  contrived  cultural  products  are  increasingly "staged" for tourists and decorated so as to look authentic. Fake "airport art" (Graburn 1967) is sold to tourists as if it were a genuine cultural product. Above all, tourists, who are apparently permitted to penetrate beyond the "front" areas of the visited society into its "back" (MacCannell 1973:597-8), are in fact cheated. Such b ck regions are frequently inauthentic "false backs," insidiously staged  or tourist consumption. Thus, for example, localities may be staged a  being remote, or "non-touristic," in order to induce tourists to "discover' em (MacCannell 1973:594); and native inhabitants of "exotic" places, re taught to "play the native" in order to appear "authentic" to the/tourists (cf. Cohen 1982a:19-21).

Comment by 陳老頭 on December 10, 2021 at 9:34pm

（Con't）Three, "staged authenticity" is said to thwart the tourist's genuine desire for authentic experiences. MacCannell (1973:597) argued that "Touristic consciousness is motivated by the desire for authentic experiences, and the tourist may believe that he is moving in that direction . . . " However, it is often the case that " . . . what is taken to be entry into a back region is really entry into a front region that has been totally set up in advance [i.e., has been staged] for touristic visitation." According to MacCannell (1973:593), the tourist, in his desire for authentic experience, is the Modern embodiment of the religious pilgrim. Tourism thus appears to become a modern surrogate for religion (MacCannell 1973:589; cf. also Cohen In Press b.). However, it is implicit in Mac Cannell's analysis that there is no salvation in tourism: the tourist establishment dominates the tourist industry, and by misleading tourists to accept contrived attractions as "authentic," creates a "false touristic consciousness." A fully developed mass tourist system surrounds the tourist with a staged tourist space, from which there is "no exit." The modern tourist-pilgrim is thus damned to inauthenticity: "Tourists make brave sorties out from their hotels hoping, perhaps, for an authentic experience, but their paths can be traced in advance over small increments of what is for them increasingly apparent authenticity proffered by [staged] tourist settings. Adventurous tourists progress eorn stage to stage, always in the public eye, and greeted everywhere by their obliging hosts" (MacCannell 1973:602).

It follows from these assumptions that commoditization, engendered by tourism, allegedly destroys not only the meaning of cultural products for the locals but, paradoxically, also for the tourists.  It thus emerges that, the more tourism flourishes, the more it allegedly becomes a colossal deception. These assumptions are highly persuasive and appealing to both sociologists and critics of modern society. But the conclusion seems far-fetched and hard to accept; unless, of course, one adopts a view of modern society as completely absurd and dominated by sinister powers, so that its members are surreptitiously misled to believe that they have genuinely authentic experiences, while in fact being systematically debarred from having them. However, before one goes to that extreme, it would be prudent to examine critically the above assumptions, in order to reach perhaps some more realistic conclusions.

 

AUTHENTICITY

"Authenticity" is an eminently modern value (cf. Appadurai 1986:45 Berger, 1973; Trilling 1972), whose emergence is closely related to the impact of modernity upon the unity of social existence. As institutions become, in Nietzsche's words, "weightless" and lose their reality (Berger 1973:86; Trilling 1972:138), the individual is said to turn into himself. "If nothing on 'the outside' can be relied upon to give weight to the individual's sense of reality, he is left no option but to burrow into himself in search of the real. Whatever this ens realissimurn m y then turn out to be, it must necessarily be in opposition to any extern al [modern] social formation. The opposition between self and society has now reached its maximum. The concept of authenticity is one way of articu-
lating this experience" (Berger 1973:88).

Modern man is thus seen, from the perspective of a contemporary existential philosophical anthropology, as a being in quest of authenticity. 

Comment by 陳老頭 on December 7, 2021 at 5:41pm

（con't）Since modern society is inauthentic, those modern seekers who desire to overcome the opposition between their authenticity-seeking self and society have to look elsewhere for authentic life. The quest for authenticity thus becomes a prominent motif of modern tourism, as MacCannell (1973, 1976) so incisively showed. However, here is also found the source of the confusion which the unexplicated use of this term introduced into tourism studies. In Mac Cannell's writings, as indeed in those of the researchers who followed his line of analysis (e.g., Redfoot 1984), the "quest for authenticity" is a "primitive" concept, which is at best illustrated, but left undefined. However, one appears to understand intuitively what is meant by it. It is a quest for that unity between the self and societal institutions, which endowed pre-modern existence with "reality" (Berger 1973:85). The alienated modern tourist in quest of authenticity hence looks for the pristine, the primitive, the natural, that which is as yet untouched by modernity. He hopes to find it in other times and other places (MacCannell 1976:160), since it is absent from his own world.

The difficulty with this use of the concept of "authenticity" in tourism studies is that it is a philosophical concept which has been uncritically introduced into sociological analysis. Furthermore, in tourism studies, the concept is used to characterize a criterion of evaluation used by the modern tourist as observer. The question, whether the "tourees" observed by the tourist at all possess such a concept, and if so, which traits of their own culture they consider to be "authentic" is rarely, if ever raised. Finally, the social analyst is tacitly assumed to understand the tourist's quest for "authenticity" because both belong to the modern world; they both appear to conceive of "authenticity" in similar, unproblematic terms. "Authenticity" thus takes up a given or "objective" quality attributable by moderns to the world "out there." The only apparent difference between the tourist and the social analyst is that the latter is more circumspect than the former. He is therefore assumed tb-)be able to penetrate beyond appearances, and discover the deception of "staged authenticity" (MacCannell 1973) perpetrated by the tourees, or the tourist establishment. The unsuspecting tourist, who is less sophisticated and knowledgeable than the analyst, is assumed to be taken in by such prevarications. It then follows that, if the tourist had the analyst's debunking knowledge, he would reject the "staged authenticity" of the

sights as contrived and lacking in authenticity. MacCannell and others who adopted his conceptual framework did not raise the possibility that the tourist and social analyst may conceive of authenticity in different terms.

In contrast to MacCannell, it is suggested that "authenticity" is a socially constructed concept and its social (as against philosophical) connotation is, therefore, not given, but "negotiable." The manner of the negotiation of its meaning should hence ?e made a major topic in the sociological and anthropological study of tourism. Several specific issues have to be distinguished.

 

Differential Conceptions of Authenticity                           

According to Trilling (197    •93) the provenance of the word "authenticity" " . . . is in the museuih, where persons expert in such matters test whether objects of art [and by extension, ethnographic objects] are what they appear to be or are claimed to be, and therefore . . . worth the admiration they are being given." The approah to "authenticity" current until recently among cutators and ethno  aphers will hence help to clarify the socially constructed nature of the concept. 

Comment by 陳老頭 on December 2, 2021 at 12:49pm

（Con't）One of the paradoxes of the progressive professionalization of curators of primitive and ethnic art in the world's museums has been that a growing number of objects were declared to be "fakes," not because any new information had been discovered on the objects themselves, but rather because the connotation of the concept of fakery had been gradually extended. "Purist" curators and art historians tended to conceive of authenticity in primitive and ethnic art in ever more rigorous terms. Thus, McLeod, the director of the Museum of Mankind and an expert of African art, defined "genuine" (i.e., authentic) African art as" . . . any piece made from traditional materials by a native craftsman for acquisition and use by members of local society (though not necessarily by members of his own group) that is made and used with no thought that it ultimately may be disposed of for gain to Europeans or other aliens" (McLeod 1976:31).

Another author, also discussing African art, declared as authentic "Any object created for a traditional purpose and by a traditional artist . . . ," but only if it " . . . conforms to traditional forms" (Cornet 1975:52, 55; emphases in the original). Like McLeod, Cornet also argues that, in order to be acceptable as authentic, the product should not be manufactured "specifically for the market" (1975:52).

Both authors hence emphasize the absence of commoditization as a crucial consideration in judgments of authenticity. It is noteworthy that Cornet proposes his definition despite his observation that there are cases where " . . . fakes [i.e., inauthentic objects] have become authen-
tic" (197.5:54), and cites as example objects produced by African artisans, in the past, for European patrons.

Such strict attitude  to authenticity, while in one sense professional, reflect in another the general modern preoccupation with authenticity which, indeed, appears to have contributed to the growing rigour of professional attitudes. Authenticity, for curators and ethnographers, is principally a quality of pre-modern life, and of cultural products produced prior to the penetration of modern Western influences: hence the common emphasis on cultural products which were "hand made" from "natural" materials. This emphasis obviously reflects the alienation of modern man from artificial and machine-made products. "The machine . . . could  make  only  inauthentic things,  dead  things . . " (Trilling 1972:127). The same is essentially true for those anthropologists who, in quest of an "ethnographic present," seek to recapture the society and culture of the people whom they study as these had been before the "contaminating" c9ntact with the Western world.

Here too, scientific consensus mingles with the more personal, modern quest for the "pristine" and "authentic." Curators, ethnographers, and anthropologists thus constitute the most fitting prototypes of Mac Cannell's tourist who seek authenticity in other times and other places. Redfoot (1984:299-301), indeed, classifies anthropologists as "third-order tourists" who, according to Levi-Strauss, " . . . reject the artifices in their own culture and seek an alternative reality in 'quest"; once there, however, they (unlike Redfoot's "fourth-order tourists") " . . . refrain from "going native" (1984:300). The anthropologist, thus " . . . digs deeper [than other tourists] in a quest for authenticity . . . " though, his quest " . . . is doomed to failure because of the subjective distancing from the 'primitive' built into the anthropologist's role" (1984:301).(Erik Cohen, 1988, Authenticity & Commodization in Tourism, Annals of Burtsm &march, Vol. 15, pp. 371-386, 1988)

Comment by 陳老頭 on November 28, 2021 at 9:57am

(con't) Anthropologists, like curators and ethnographers, even if para-Anthropologists, like curators and ethnographers, even if paradigmatic of the modern tourist, appear to entertain more rigorous criteria of authenticity than do ordinary members of the/traveling pub-lic. They belong to the wider category of modern, alienated intellectu-als— indeed, their alienation from modernity often induces them to choose their respective professions.Alienation may well be a structural consequence of the pluralization of modern life-worlds and the "weightlessness" of modern institutions (Berger 1973; Berger et al 1973). However not all moderns are personal-?ly equally alienated or aware of their alienation. Those who continue to identify unreflectively with one or another of the centers of modernity such as the work-ethic or the ethos of material and occupational achievement, are personally less alienated than those who are not so identified. Those who are disposed to reflect upon their life-situation are more aware of their alienation than those who do not tend to such contemplation.Intellectuals, here exemplified by curators, ethnographers, and an-thropologists, will be generally more alienated, and more aware of their alienation, than the rank-and-file middle-classes, and especially the lower middle class, who still strive to attain the material gains which those beyond them already enjoy.Alienation and the qUest for authenticity, however, appear to be positively related (cf. Cohen 1979a:181-2). It follows that intellectuals and other more alienated individuals will engage on a more serious quest of authenticity than most rank-and-file members of society. It is hypothesized further that, the greater their concern for authenticity, the stricter will be the criteria by which they conceive of it. Less alienated and hence less concerned individuals, including most rank-and-file tourists, will be content with much wider, less strict criteria of authen-ticity. This was probably meant by Nettekoven (1973) when he argued that "tourists are not ethnologists" and by Desai (1974:3), when he observed 'that the tourist is not a "stickler for authenticity."However, though most tourists may not seek "'authentic' experiences in any ethnographic sense," Goldberg.(1983:486) cautions that "neither are they content with mere entertainment " Tourists indeed ap-pear to seek authenticity in varying degrees of intensity, depending on the degree of their alienation from modernity. 1Following the preceding analysis, it can be argued that they will also c nceive "authenticity" in different degrees of strictness. In other words,  ndividuals who are less concerned with the authenticity of their tourist'  e .eriences, will be more prepared to accept as "authentic" a cultural pro uct or attraction which more concerned tourists, applying stricter cr), eria, will reject as "contrived."This argument can be restated in terms of the author's earlier typology of "modes of touristic experience" (Cohen 1979a; In Pressb) in which five types. of such modes were proposed, according to the depth of experience the individual seeks in tourism. 

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