Original scientific paper
Segmenting Chinese Tourists by the Expected Experience at Theme Parks
Shan Chen
; Politecnico di Milano, Department of Management, Economics and Industrial Engineering
Lucio Lamberti
; Politecnico di Milano, Department of Management, Economics and Industrial Engineering
Abstract
In this paper, we propose an experiential approach to tourist segmentation aimed at overcoming the limits of both socio-demographic and context-specific approaches widely adopted in the literature and in practice. In this study, segmentation is carried out based upon the expected experiences of Chinese tourists at the Shanghai World Exposition. The segmentation reveals four tourist clusters with different interests in relation to their experiences in visiting the World Exposition. The clusters showed insignificant differences in the demographics but proved to be powerfully discriminant in determining tourists’ satisfaction and loyalty, which affirms the potential of the tourist experience being a segmenting variable. Moreover, thanks to the analysis, an evaluation of the Shanghai World Exposition’s success in terms of visitors’ satisfaction is provided.
Keywords
Experience; Segmentation; Satisfaction; Loyalty; World Exposition
Hrčak ID:
160907
URI
Publication date:
1.1.2013.
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