The role of affective factors on perceived cruise vacation value
Introduction
Recently, consumers’ value perceptions have attracted growing attention from academics and practitioners (e.g., Sweeney & Soutar, 2001; Gale, 1994; Holbrook, 1999; Woodruff & Gardial, 1996; Petrick, 2003). Yet, compared to quality and satisfaction, value perceptions have received scant attention (Holbrook, 1999; Cronin, Brady, & Hult, 2000). As the marketplace offers a variety of products with ranging quality and price levels, consumers are becoming more careful in spending their dollars on high value products. Moreover, customers’ value perceptions seem to drive their future behaviors such as repurchase intent and word-of-mouth referrals (Brady & Cronin, 2001; Cronin et al., 2000). If value perceptions are important for consumer behavior theory and practice, then, the next logical task is to explore its antecedents and consequences in a variety of consumption settings. The present study focuses on experiential services such as cruise vacations.
Research in consumer behavior shows that affective responses to consumption objects influence consumers’ post-purchase evaluations (e.g., Mano & Oliver, 1993; Wirtz, Mattila, & Tan, 2001). In a similar vein, recent conceptualizations of value emphasize experiential or hedonic aspects of the consumption experience (Babin, Darden, & Griffin, 1994; Holbrook, 1999; Babin & Attaway, 2000; Hightower, Brady, & Baker, 2002; Sweeney & Soutar, 2001). Affective gratification is the main consumption goal for many hedonic services (Kempf, 1999), including leisure travel. Accordingly, we propose that consumers’ affective responses are directly related to perceived value in highly experiential service settings such as cruising. Since satisfaction is largely based on consumers’ emotional responses to marketing stimuli (e.g., Oliver, 1997), we further propose that satisfaction should mediate the relationship between affect and value. In the following section, we briefly review previous conceptualizations of value and then present our research model.
Section snippets
Previous conceptualizations of perceived value
Initial conceptualizations of value in the marketing literature were mainly price-based. Thaler (1985), for example, argued that consumers’ value perceptions are the result of a comparison between various price structures, including advertised selling price, advertised reference price and internal reference price. Monroe (1990) further proposed that perceived overall value is a weighted sum of acquisition and transaction value. Acquisition value reflects the difference between the maximum price
A model of perceived value for cruise vacation evaluations
Our research model is depicted in Fig. 1. In this model, we argue that three affective factors (novelty, control and hedonics) influence consumers’ value perceptions in the context of cruise vacation experiences. Otto and Ritchie (1995) showed that experiential quality is an important component of customers’ evaluation processes in various service settings. In their study, hedonic factors, novelty and control were identified as important sub-dimensions of the service experience with leisure
Data collection
American leisure travelers who had taken a cruise vacation in 2000 or 2001 served as the study population. A sample of cruise vacationers was supplied by a well-known mailing list company in the US, which specializes in the collection of addresses of individuals for research purposes. For the purposes of this study, a computer-generated random list of 1500 cruise vacationers was purchased and used as the sampling frame. The initial questionnaire was pre-tested with a convenience sample of 26
Preliminary analysis
The final sample included a total of 392 usable surveys, representing a 26% response rate. The sample was slightly dominated by female respondents (54%) and the majority of the respondents fell in the 36–55 age group. Approximately 80% of the respondents had at least some college education, with 56% having earned a college degree. Twenty-six percent of the respondents reported a household income between $40,000 and $79,000 per year. Approximately 60% of the respondents had taken at least three
Discussion
The shift toward “experience economy” (Pine et al., 1999) has forced marketers to pay attention to the entire consumption experience. Providing high quality products or services is no longer sufficient; satisfying customers’ affective needs has become increasingly important in the emerging competitive environment. This research contributes to tourism literature by demonstrating the importance of affective factors in the context of experiential services such as cruise vacations. Most previous
Managerial implications
Today, managers as well as academics recognize the importance of value in driving consumers’ product evaluations and future purchase decisions (Barlow & Maul, 2000; Gale, 1994; Weinstein & Johnson, 1999; Woodruff & Gardial, 1996). To meet the demand of increasingly value-conscious customers, managers need to understand what defines value in their customers’ minds. This study sheds some light into customers’ value perceptions of experiential services such as leisure travel products and services.
Limitations and directions for future research
Design issues present one of the main limitations of this study. The causal relationships were tested with a single study, while a true test of the causality would measure constructs in different time periods. Also, we did not test for reversal causal effects, which might have influenced the mediation effects between the constructs (Kenny, Kashy, & Bolger, 1998). Although the sample size was deemed acceptable, a larger sample would have allowed us to run more powerful analyses. Due to our
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