Purpose This paper aims to examine tourists’ preferences for package holidays offering different bundles of activities at a winter mountain destination. A winter mountain destination is usually chosen for snow sports, particularly skiing, but increasingly more tourists want to fully exploit their holiday opportunity with an authentic and comprehensive experience of the place. After collecting qualitative data on how tourists spend their typical day, quantitative research is conducted to segment the demand on the basis of tourists’ preferences for bundles of activities undertaken during a winter mountain holiday. Design/methodology/approach The study uses a mixed method. Two focus groups are included to understand how tourists spend their time at a winter destination; results are then used to identify the components of the holiday, which are then combined in eight packages using an orthogonal array. A questionnaire is administered to a sample of 273 tourists at a well-known mountain destination to measure their preference for different packages. Results are analyzed using factor analysis, conjoint analysis and cluster analysis. Findings The most significant findings are as follows: winter mountain holidaying is a highly segmented market. Even at a mountain destination strongly associated with skiing, there are many tourists who do not ski and spend their time doing something else; food and beverage, and all their related activities, are at the top of all tourists’ interests, and passionate skiers very highly rate the experience of tasting, eating, understanding and buying local food; and there are four segments of winter mountain holiday tourists who show very differentiated interests for the different activities that can be experienced at a mountain location. Originality/value This paper considers what lies beyond sport at winter mountain destinations, and it reveals new possibilities for configuring bundles of activities to attract different segments of tourists.

One day while in the store, Bernard grabs his usual Dominick's cream cheese off the shelf. I notice and point out that the national brand of Philadelphia cream cheese is on sale and less expensive. Bernard looks at the two products and actually hesitates for a while to switch to the national brand. His hesitation makes it clear that his preference is not based solely on price. (Chang Coupland 2005, 115). Recent research has proved the existence of interesting and significant interactions between consumer purchase behavior related to national brand promotions and private labels, traditionally investigated as separate phenomena. Following this path, our work investigates the behavior of consumers concerning the purchase of private labels and the purchase of national brands sold on monetary and non-monetary promotions. The empirical research has been conducted in Italy, a country with a relatively low, but increasing, penetration of private labels. A sample of consumers has been interviewed in person, and data were analyzed in three steps. First, a principal component analysis was run on the three behaviors of interest and their antecedent variables. Second, factors relative to the antecedents were regressed on the factors relative to the dependent variables. Finally, a cluster analysis was operated on the factors related to the three dependent variables to segment consumers. The cluster analysis shows four segments that can be grouped in two macro-segments: consumers who use and who do not use private labels. Since the second macro-segment is larger than the first (56% vs. 44%), retailers who want to improve the performance of their brands could work on their penetration, trying to attract the 56% of consumers who do not use them. As these consumers use sales promotions, monetary and non-monetary, retailers could develop original promotional strategies, specifically targeted to each segment. Avenues for future research include a multi-country survey and separate investigations of individual promotion techniques, which have shown very distinctive characteristics.

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