Meltem Caber

The effect of environmental concern and scepticism on green purchase behaviour

Purpose – The aims of the study are: to compare the environmental concern and scepticism levels of the participants and whether or not they display green purchase behaviour; to investigate the influence of environmental concern and scepticism on green purchase behaviour by utilizing the Theory of Planned Behaviour.Design/methodology/approach – The data were collected from participant and non‐participant customers of the e‐invoicing program of Turk Telecom. Customers were clustered into four groups according to their environmental concerns and scepticism levels.Findings – Research results show that those customers who have a high level of environmental concern and less sceptical reflect a positive attitude, have a high positive subjective norm and perceived behavioural control that motivates them to have stronger intentions to become e‐invoice subscribers in the near future.Originality/value – The results found in the paper provide clear evidence supporting the Theory of Planned Behaviour in Turkey. Moreov...

Classification of the destination attributes in the content of competitiveness (by revised importance-performance analysis).

High quality services and customer satisfaction are important determinants of destination competitiveness. For effectively and efficiently managing service quality and providing customer satisfaction, managers need to know how important satisfaction drivers are, and how their performance is perceived by the customers. Importance-performance analysis (IPA), in this context, is a convenient analytical technique that guides manager’s decisions. In this article, it is argued that a revised IPA using an isoline of importance and performance instead of the traditional quadrant analysis yields better results and increases the diagnostic value of IPA. This article shows empirically that market segments differ significantly within these two dimensions of the analysis, and so it is suggested that IPA should be conducted on a segment rather than an aggregate level. The empirical basis of the article is formed by a sample of 821 customers in a Turkish destination. By utilising IPA technique, determinant attributes of the competitiveness for subject destination could be identified for four market segments.

The symmetric and asymmetric influences of destination attributes on overall visitor satisfaction

Visitors are impressed by specific destination attributes, which are sometimes the main motivating reasons for the travel selection or sometimes they are just one of the elements of a whole destination experience. This is because tourism and travel products are generally a combination of several different supplier offerings or they are a combination of the natural and artificial attributes of a destination that cannot be fully known before the experience of travel. Moreover, the importance and influence of these attributes on overall visitor satisfaction may differ considerably, depending on the market segments. In recent years, some studies have shown that the influences of destination attributes on overall visitor satisfaction are not symmetric in every case. For the purposes of this study, the symmetric and asymmetric influences of destination attributes are investigated for three major market segments of the Side-Manavgat area, Antalya, Turkey. The results show that the importance and influences of destination attributes may change according to the analysis technique employed and the market segment examined.

The Classification of Extranet Attributes in Terms of Their Asymmetric Influences on Overall User Satisfaction An Introduction to Asymmetric Impact-Performance Analysis

Information systems (IS), such as Internet applications, are widely used by the tourism and travel industry. Extranets, in particular, allow controlled access of outside organizations into a company’s internal systems. In the travel industry, these technological applications are generated and supplied by tour operators and used by travel agents to conduct their business. Use of an extranet is of benefit to a travel operator who gains more revenue if travel agents select or recommend its particular products. This article classifies the attributes of a tour operator’s extranet system in terms of its asymmetric influence on its user (travel agency sales representatives) satisfaction. In addition, a revised version of impact-asymmetry analysis is presented, called asymmetric impact-performance analysis, which is a simple and visual technique that assesses the key attributes for increasing overall user satisfaction.

Relationships of the Tangible and Intangible Elements of Tourism Products with Overall Customer Satisfaction

Tourism enterprises usually offer both tangible and intangible products to their customers which are complementary each other and perceived as the integral parts of a whole travel experience. Although the tangible and intangible products are dissimilar in characteristics, they can be distinguished by their effects on customer satisfaction or combined for improving customer satisfaction. In this study, hotel products have been categorized by their tangibility and intangibility as well as their influences on customer satisfaction. The sample of the research consisted of the customers of a tour operator from six countries (the Russian Federation, Ukraine, Belarus, Latvia, Tatarstan, and Kazakhstan) whose holiday destination was Antalya, Turkey. Regression analysis results showed that tangible elements of the products were more influential on overall customer satisfaction than intangible elements at the hotels. Only for customers from Latvia, intangible elements of the hotel were more influential on overall satisfaction. This study showed that customer perceptions about the tangible and intangible elements of the tourism products may be varied according to nationalities, although tourism products usually combine both elements.

Does the importance of hotel attributes differ for senior tourists?: A comparison of three markets.

Purpose – The purpose of this study is to identify the importance of hotel attributes for pre-senior and senior tourists when selecting a hotel. Design/methodology/approach – Three market segments (German, Dutch and British) were selected as the sample of the research. The Callan and Bowman’s (2000) scale was employed and data obtained from 13 five star hotels in Antalya, Turkey. Findings – Results of the study showed that “value for money” and “availability of organized entertainment in the hotel” were important attributes for senior British tourists when compared to other participants. Dutch senior tourists attached more importance to food service attributes (“small food portions” and “special dietary menus”) than did the other respondents. Practical implications – Research results confirmed the importance of staff attributes (“politeness of staff” and “friendliness of staff”) for customer satisfaction. This finding highlights the need for training programmes targeting hospitality employees, with a spec...

The effect of personality traits on private brand consumer tendencies

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to investigate the association between three personality traits (individualism, materialism and the “need for cognition”) and two characteristics of shoppers who buy private‐label brands (their predisposition to do so, and the importance they attach to the “brand dimensions”) across four member countries of the Union of the Mediterranean.Design/methodology/approach – A questionnaire in the local language, using questions, items and scales adapted from previous studies, was completed by 683 undergraduate students. The scaled data were analysed by SPSS, and tested for internal reliability and equivalence.Findings – Overall, the personality traits were significantly associated with both behavioural characteristics. Specifically, materialism and the need for cognition were linked to inclination to purchase private brands, and materialism and individualism to the perceived importance of brand dimensions. Cross‐cultural differences were found.Originality/value – The demogr...

Penalty–Reward-Contrast Analysis: a review of its application in customer satisfaction research

It is widely observed that researchers use Penalty–Reward-Contrast Analysis (PRCA) to identify the asymmetric influences of product/service attributes on overall customer satisfaction, since it readily adapts to typical customer satisfaction data. However, there is no consensus on its application phases. An extensive literature review of PRCA revealed differences in three main issues: (1) definition of low and high performance levels; (2) decision on the regression coefficients (standardised or unstandardised) for penalty and reward values and (3) classification of the attributes. Therefore, in this study, the authors aim to contribute to the existing literature by proposing a standardised process for PRCA application. Moreover, by using the data on a case study, the authors intended to show that different applications may also produce different findings from the same research data.

Measurement of the destination evaluation supporting factors and their effects on behavioral intention of visitors: Antalya Region of Turkey.

In this study, the authors tried to identify the basic destination attributes that affect visiting tourists most, by ignoring their pre-visit expectations and using a performance-only approach. Considering one years tourism data of the Antalya region, five different structured questionnaires (in English, German, Russian, Dutch, and French) were given to a sample of visiting tourists. In all, 4,493 out of 13,461 questionnaires were returned, representing a 33.37% rate of return. According to the results of exploratory factor analysis, five factors (health and hygiene, shopping, information, local transportation, and accommodation) contributed to the differentation of the destination attributes. In addition to these, in order to understand the interrelationships between destinations evaluation supporting factors and behavioral intentions of the visitors, structural equation modeling technique was used by the authors.

Clustering Consumers According to Their Environmental Concerns and Scepticisms

In this study, authors aimed to measure the environmentally sensitive behaviour of consumers and to cluster them according to their environmental concerns and scepticisms. These two psychographic variables were selected by their diverse nature and importance for understanding the basic determinants of a continuously developing market segment. Since the studies about the role of scepticism on environmentally sensitive consumer behaviour are quite limited in marketing literature, this study is expected to contribute towards the efforts of filling the existing gap.