Marlene Annette Pratt

Predicting wine tourism intention: destination image and self-congruity.

ABSTRACT Using the context of wine tourism, this study tests an integrated structural model of destination factors and self-congruity to predict behavioral intentions. A survey of 696 respondents throughout Australia showed that functional destination image, affective destination image, and self-congruity predict attitude toward wine tourism, which in turn predicts behavioral intentions. The moderating influence of wine involvement was also tested through multigroup and latent mean analysis. Consumers who were highly involved with wine appeared to be more influenced by affective destination image and self-congruity than those who indicated low wine involvement.

Effects of Simulation on Student Satisfaction With a Capstone Course

Simulations have been identified as an effective learning tool to supplement existing traditional methods of instruction with a range of benefits. This article presents an empirically tested model of student learning experience using a simulation within a hotel and tourism management capstone course and explores the impact of simulation use on student satisfaction. Problems identified in the literature include poorly designed measures, weak theoretical frameworks, and a lack of methodological rigor, which are addressed. Overall, the results indicate that simulations can be an effective learning method to increase students’ satisfaction and enhance university course quality in higher education.

MOOCs and the Integration of Social Media and Curation Tools in e-Learning

MOOCs (Massive Open Online Courses) have gained popularity for e-learning purposes. Effectiveness depends on platform interface design and management, which should create student cohesiveness and optimize collaboration. A MOOC prototype was developed and e-learning applications were pilot-tested for one semester with a total of 160 students from graduate courses in a French business school. Students used a mobile supported e-learning environment and reported their experiences through the writing of a synthesis, the building of a CMS (Content Management System) and the elaboration of a content curation system.

Wine tourism research: a systematic review of 20 vintages from 1995 to 2014

This paper provides a review of 176 papers on wine tourism published between 1995–2014, highlighting research fields, wine regions studied, theory and methodologies used, journals and authors publishing wine tourism research. This paper aims to provide a reference guide for future researchers through a systematic review of wine tourism research over 20 years. The study contributes to the existing literature reviews of wine tourism and consequently, identifies key gaps for further study. Wine production and wine tourism have very different business foci within wineries. However, the findings reveal the importance of strengthening the synergies between wine production and tourism to be successful. In addition, findings revealed different research agendas between New World and Old World wine countries, where the former has a focus on wine tourism while the later on wine production. There has been an increase in theory building which highlights the complexity of the wine tourism experience. Based on this review, the wine tourism research framework developed by Carlsen (2004) has been extended to include two themes: regional development and the experiential wine tourist. The results reveal relevant findings for academics, winemakers and tourism managers regarding the background and future trends of wine tourism.

Self image congruity and its impact on wine tourism

Consumer decisions involve not only rational and utilitarian attributes, but also value and symbolic attributes of a product or service. Self-image congruity models are based on the notion of the cognitive matching between value expressive attributes of a given product or brand and the consumers’ self-image (Sirgy and Johar 1985). This research investigates the impact of self-image congruity on wine tourism behaviour, specifically winery/cellar door visitation, with the inclusion of functional and affective destination image constructs of wine regions, and attitude toward wine tourism. There is a lack of evidence within the tourism literature of the effect of self-congruity on the intentions or motivations to visit a destination (Chon 1992; Litvin and Goh 2002; Sirgy and Su 2000). In addition the researcher is interested in the potential differences of consumers who are considered high involved wine consumers vs those who are low involved wine consumers, and the impact on the self-image congruity model. Involvement as a construct is well established in wine purchasing behaviour (Lockshin, Jarvis, d’Hauteville and Perrouty 2006; Lockshin, Quester and Spawton 2001; Lockshin, Spawton and Macintosh 1997; Lockshin and Spawton 2001; Quester and Smart 1996; Rasmussen and Lockshin 1999; Zaichkowsky 1985). The link between wine involvement and wine tourism activity however, has only recently been explored by Brown, Havitz and Getz (2006), who developed a wine involvement scale (WIS). Similarly limited research has been conducted evaluating the effect of involvement with self-congruity. One study found the effect of involvement moderated the effect of congruity where the greater the involvement with travelling, the more important self-congruity is (Beerli et al., 2007).