Behavior And Motivation Factors That Influence Asian Tourism Essay

Human behavior are an essential study for marketing to research, analyze and implement in order to improve a better service in the future or use the survey of customer’s need to fulfill the right needs to the right target. If we lack of knowledge of our customer’s behavior we may miss the opportunity to approach and sell the product to the customer.

A rationale for this topic research is to study both behavior and motivation, which drive an Asian tourist to travel to Thailand. The most influence media nowadays are online sources where it is fast to access therefore, this should be compound of an attractive wording or information to persuade consumer and make them believe, trust in the places and looking forward to visit.

According to John Crompton research in the area of consumer behavior and marketing which can apply in the field of tourism development and to non-profit leisure organizations. The title of research is “Motivation for Pleasure Vacations” that identifies all of the possibility motives of pleasure vacationers, which influence the selection of a destination. Empirically nine motives were mentioned; seven are classified as socio-psychological, another two come in the form of cultural category.

The perception surveys before and after travelling are quite interesting. Since the itinerary has been booked, the traveler cannot predict what will they encounter with. Therefore, a personal expectation may be meet their expectation, overestimated or probably underestimated.

CLEAR TITLE OF PROJECT

“A study of behavior and motivation factors that influence and encourage Asian tourist for choosing Thailand as their travel destination, accordance with pre and post perception.”

CONCISE STATEMENT OF RESEARCH PROBLEM

To promote the destination “marketing strategy” should be involve therefore the image of the places should be maintain and adjust in order to be the top destination that people will consider on the first rank in their mind. Nowadays, the promotion is not right to the target; how to pull out our strength and make it outstanding to capture customer’s interest is a great challenge and be the number one problem that need to be fix soon. Moreover, in order to improve the trust and a good perception before travelling the organization should understand the nature of Asian tourist’s behavior and boost up with the right strategy. The structures of organization in Thailand related to tourism are not well planning as many overlapping position and complicated. This lead to ambiguous in management and restricted the concept idea of staff within organization.

PROJECT OBJECTIVE (S)

The objectives for doing this research are:

To study and survey human behaviors especially Asian traveler in order to understand the majority objective of visiting Thailand.

To study about the motivation that drive Asian tourists choose Thailand as their destination.

To identify and classify the group of tourist according to their interest for using the right market strategy to the right target.

To see the defect of the destination in order to make improvement and maintain the reputation of the country.

To compare and evaluate the perception of Thailand before and after visit.

CONCEPTUAL FRAMEWORK

THE SCOPE AND DEFINITION OF THE STUDY

The study will be using the concept of John L. Crompton, 1979 who research about the motivations for pleasure vacations, where nine motives were indentified. Seven were break down as “socio-psychological”, that are escape from the perceived mundane environment, exploration and evaluation of self, relaxation, prestige, regression, enhancement of kinship relationships and facilitation of social interaction. Another two were in “cultural category”, which are novelty and education. I will use his theory to be a prototype and find the conclusion of what motivate Asian people decide to come to travel in Thailand. Including compare the perception of Thailand before and after visit. Moreover, many more reason and motivation for travel to Thailand such as value of money, stopover flight, food, culture, natural resources, word of mouth, Thai service mind and the media are all the things to be concern in this research.

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Consumer behavior will also be mentioned as we learn that the good perception of the tourist is vital for their decision-making and once they visit us are they satisfied as they expected will be included. Consumer behavior, which relevant in the tourism field is one of the difficult researches since it related to the emotional significance and their decision to purchase is base on their delectation (Swarbrooke & Horner 1999). Additionally, marketing strategy is using to analyze the data and making decisions about the type of advertising to catch up tourist for travelling to Thailand.

ASSUMPTIONS

Most of Asian visitors to Thailand are expecting the variety of the quality of goods and services. Thai people are the country branding of service mind and kind personality that impress the Asian visitors and feel comfortable during their visit. The assumption for this research is what the Asian traveler expect is more than their expectation from their first supposition.

LIMITATIONS

The limitations to this research are language and literacy difficulties as some countries are nationalism and rarely communicate in English for example Japanese, Korea etc. Furthermore, during the time of questionnaire survey may have uncertain situations that hardly collect information such as the economic crisis or political issue which affect the number of tourists. Time constraint is also one of the limitations for the research as the rush of time may lead to unreliable result. Cooperation from the tourists is very essential to complete the sample survey in time.

HUMAN ETHICS CONSIDERATIONS

Some of the answer may be dishonorable as the tourist may have a short time visit and do not want to wasting their time to answer the questionnaire. They may not be interested in the survey topic or make a quick judgment without putting the real feeling. The survey will not force or oblige to do so if they feel uncomfortable. All of this should be consider as the human ethics, which is the most influence in the overall result. Moreover, the research question and procedure should not contain the cause of any physical or emotional harm. If the sensitive questions are asked, it is advisable to exclude name and addresses (IDRC n.d.).

PRACTICAL SIGNIFICANCE

This research will be valuable for the Tourism Authority of Thailand (TAT), Ministry of Tourism and Sports (MoTS), Provincial Administration or any stakeholders in travel and tourism industries: hospitality, tour operator, restaurant and bar, transportation and media. For continue developing the product and service the marketer will use this research for the data sources of the motivation for Asian tourist to Thailand and encourage the tourist to travel more by launch the new campaign or advertisement that persuade tourist to flow in to the country which can help stimulate the country’s economic.

The future of Thailand travel structure can be define according to this research because the knowledge of why people selected the destination can be analyses and practical significance for the overall tourism industry.

BACKGROUND INFORMATION

Kingdom of Thailand is the land of smile located in the heart of Southeast Asia, covering an area of 513,115 sq.km. The capital city is Bangkok where it is the centre of cultural and business. The country neighbors are Laos, Myanmar, Cambodia and Malaysia (Ministry of Foreign Affairs, 2007).

Thailand is one of the country in Southeast Asia that remain the “star” of Asian tourism but still in a high competition with Malaysia, Indo-China, South Korea, China, Philippines and Indonesia where they start to increase their brand power and brand recognition (Asian Market Research, 2003). Thailand can be visited year-round, high season will start from November to January while low season (rainy season) will be start from June to October. During low season, the hotels and tour operators usually offer a discount to attract more bookings.

The Asian tourists are in the same continent as Thailand, therefore similar in cultural, climate, food and people is not tough to adjust themselves to travel to a different country within the same continent. Thailand should have a good tourism planning in order to develop and pull out the potential tendency that can be promote Thailand as top ten tourism country in South East Asia. However, to keep the faith of the tourist to travel to Thailand is another hard work but not that hard if we have cooperation from other parties and heading to the same mission.

LITERATURE REVIEW

A case study on the topic of “Does nationality, gender, and age affect travel motivation?” that was survey by Jonsson and Devonish (2008) conduces to the understanding of what motivates tourists from different nationalities for travelling to a specific destination. However, a better understand the destination choice processes are tourist motivations, attitudes and their perceptions, which are an important socio-cognitive variables. In order to understand tourist behavior, the research should identify the types of tourist and segment tourists with systematically analyze. Furthermore, the study of tourist motivation will be useful for governments and tourism marketers for the purpose of product and image development including the promotional activities boost up. (Jonsson & Devonish 2008)

Kozak (2002) explained that in describing travel motivations there need to be more focus on tourist demographics such as nationality, gender and age that influence the travel motivations of tourists. As the fundamental element of the tourism system is the destination with its plentiful of resources, therefore an important of tourist motivation is to identify the markets and match tourist motivation with the destination. Moreover, Kozak (2002) examine on the differences in tourist motivations between nationalities and destinations. His examine found that the structure to measure travel motivations consist of four dimensions of motives: 1) Cultural motives, 2) Pleasure-seeking / fantasy-based motives, 3) Relaxation-based motives and 4) Physical motives.

Crompton (1979) emphasized the study of “push” and “pull” factors. “Push” factors are intangible that push or drive tourist away from home, while “Pull” factors are tangible that can pulling tourist towards destination that catch their attention.

Krippendorf (1987) conceived that the two most important psychological that drive people making a decision of taking overseas vacation are relaxation and escape from the perceived mundane environment. Some of the tourist travel abroad in order to satisfied their social needs, exploring something new, meeting local people or spending time with family and friends.

Another study by Ritter (1987) shown that tourist behavior is influenced by their nationality. Different in culture can lead to different perception and motivation for example British tourists are enjoyed and having fun with other mixed group, while German tourists had more nature and cultural-oriented motivations.

DATA REQUIRED

The data required for this research is the statistic of Asian tourists flow in Thailand each year and compare at least 3 years. The psychological theory of what motivate people for travelling is the basic of data required for understanding their reason of destination selecting. The data of pre and post perception about Thailand may require in the questionnaire whether the result is in positive, neutral or negative.

DATA SOURCES

The information sources need by this research are Asian tourists; Bangladesh, Bhutan, Brunei, Cambodia, China, Hong Kong, India, Indonesia, Iran, Iraq, Israel, Japan, Jordan, Korea, Kuwait, Lao, Malaysia, Philippines, Singapore, Sri Lanka, Taiwan and Vietnam. The nationality are not specify as long as they are from Asia the data will be collected. Not all the nationality mentioned above may include but it is up to the chance of the tourist that I will meet and ask their favor.

The data sources will be consist of two parts; Primary data is the new data that collect directly from the tourists in the form of questionnaire, Secondary data is the existing sources that help support the assumption of the research for example the literature review, the tourism organization, the article related to tourism etc.

DATA COLLECTION TECHNIQUE (S)

The technique of data collection will use the questionnaire-based surveys where the result will depend on respondents’ own attitudes, intentions and behavior, this method require researchers to be very specific about data requirement (Veal 2005). The nature of questionnaire surveys is gathering of information from individual that contain the feedback of only random of sample to be representative as a whole group.

Questionnaire survey method usually involves quantification where the results present in numerical form (Veal 2005). The systematically is very crucial for data collection. If the data are collected haphazardly the result will be distort and the time will be wasting (IDRC n.d.).

This survey will use the form of “respondent-completed” which the respondents read and fill out by themselves (Veal 2005). The survey will take place at the shopping mall, tourist attraction or along BTS line where a lot of tourist using the transportation in town. The questionnaire will have 3 sections;

Personal Data: in order to identify the range of gender, age, nationality, education, employment status, occupation and annual income.

Questionnaire: including the survey question about the motivation to travel and their satisfaction.

Suggestion / Comment: this will add the respondent’s idea exclude from the list questions.

DATA ANALYSIS

After collecting all data, the data will be sorting, coding and statistic calculation, all of this is usually involved in a survey-based management research project (Veal 2005). This research will be use the software called “Statistical Package for the Social Sciences” (SPSS)

TIMELINE