感官印象:旅游者忠诚的增益解

Sensory Impression:An Incremental Explaining Variable to Tourist Loyalty

文章基于感官营销理论,将旅游体验留下的感官印象作为旅游者忠诚的新解释变量,通过对网络点评数据的探索性研究、贴近真实情景的现场实验和实地调研问卷的实证研究3个研究,检验其在感知形象基础之上对旅游者忠诚的增益解释力,借以实现对当前"形象-忠诚"模型的改进。研究结果表明:旅游者对于目的地的认识不只包括感知形象,还具有感官印象。两者的心理生成机制截然不同。前者是对信息进行心智加工后的抽象概念,而后者则是感官刺激之后留下的身体记忆。感官印象不仅是旅游者忠诚的重要影响因素,而且在控制了感知形象的作用之后,仍体现出增加的、独特的解释力。研究结论为目的地营销者提供了新的游客忠诚管理思路,丰富其游客忠诚管理的手段。

In recent years,the development of sensory marketing theories provides a new perspective for investigating tourist loyalty.This approach emphasizes that tourism destination experience is a process of engagement between tourists and the external tourism environment through the five senses(sight,smell,sound,taste,and touch).As the provider of tourism experience,the quality of the sensory experience created by the destination will directly affect the tourists.evaluation of the destination and their intention to revisit.Based on embodied cognition psychology,this paper introduces an emerging concept,sensory impression,as a new explanatory variable of tourist loyalty.By utilizing three interrelated studies(i.e.content analysis of online review,field experiment and online survey),this research verified the incremental predictive power of sensory impression on tourist loyalty.Moreover,it compared the difference between perceived destination image and sensory impression regarding their influence on loyalty behaviors,which is of great use for the improvement of previous dominated"destination image-loyalty"model.Study 1 was based on the data of tourist online reviews and tested the existence of sensory impression and its criterion validity on tourist loyalty.Through content analysis,it was found that nearly 80% of the tourists actively described their sensory feelings of the experience.The sensory impression depicted between loyal tourists and disloyal tourists are highly different.Positive sensory impression has a positive influence on tourist loyalty whereas negative sensory impression not only has negative effect,but also has stronger effect.In study 2,a field experiment was conducted.Through a stepwise regression,it was proved that tourists.sensory impression has additive explanatory power on loyalty when the influence of perceived destination image was controlled and the effect sensory impression on loyalty is stronger than the impact of destination image.In study 3,another destination was used and more generalizable sample groups were obtained through online survey to re-examine the influence of sensory impressions on tourists.loyalty,which aims to improve the robustness of the research findings,and to expand the external validity of the conclusion.Given the results of the three studies,we came to the following conclusion:(1) tourists have both perceived image and sensory impression toward the destination.They are two distinctive concepts since the psychological mechanisms of their formation are different.(2) Tourist sensory impression of the destination has stronger explanatory power than perceived destination image on tourist loyalty.By constructing the path of "impression-loyalty",this study complements to the existing body of knowledge on tourism destination behavior,especially tourist loyalty.Additionally,creating a distinctive destination image is considered to be an effective mean by destination managers to enhance tourists.loyalty.In reality,however,a common occurrence is that tourists have a clear and positive image perception toward certain destination,but they just do not feel enough physical or emotional attachment to the place,thus hindering the establishment of loyalty.Given full consideration to tourist sensory impressions can help destination managers identify the sensory channels and sources where value can be generated and perceived by tourists.Thus the research findings are valuable for destination management practice as well.