Preference and Positioning Analyses of Overseas Destinations by Mainland Chinese Outbound Pleasure Tourists

Abstract

The objective of this study is to explore the competitiveness of overseas destination countries where potential Mainland Chinese outbound tourists consider making an overseas travel and the positioning of these destination countries. According to the analysis of importance of a destination’s attributes, Mainland Chinese respondents considered “safety” and “beautiful scenery” to be the most important attributes. On the basis of KYST (Kruskal, Young, Shepard, and Torgerson) analysis, Mainland Chinese respondents perceived that the country pairs of Singapore and Thailand, Japan and South Korea, and Egypt and Germany showed a similar image. Results of the alternating least-square scaling (ALSCAL) analysis provided information on the relationship of competing countries to destination attributes. The results demonstrate competitiveness of destination countries and suggest strategies for destination markets to attract more Mainland Chinese tourists.

Digging deeper into decision-making of Chinese long-haul outbound tourists: A two-stage preference - estimation approach

“…Agrusa, Kim & Wang, 2011;Kim et al, 2005;Ryan & Mo, 2002;Sparks & Pan, 2009). This study provides further managerial implications for tourism marketers and product developers.…”

“…For instance, Ryan and Mo (2002) researched the decision-making processes of Chinese tourists visiting New Zealand and found that the main motivation was to see new places. Kim and Guo (2005) found that mainland Chinese respondents considered 'safety' and 'beautiful scenery' to be the most important attributes, whereas 'level of economic development' and 'good place for shopping' were regarded as the least important. The perceived importance of 'safety' amongst Chinese outbound tourists was also reported by Sparks and Pan (2009) and Li et al (2015).…”

“…During the desk research, destination safety was reported to be a very most important destination attribute (Kim et al, 2005;Li et al, 2015;Sparks & Pan 2009;Yu & Weiler, 2001). The informants agreed that safety is very important for Chinese tourists.…”

“…Wang et al (2010) indicated that the high prevalence of counterfeit goods in the domestic Chinese retail industry could encourage Chinese people to shop overseas. However, Kim and Guo (2005) reported that a 'good place for shopping' was the second least important attribute for Chinese outbound tourists among 10 suggested attributes. Also, in the study by Sparks and Pan (2009) shopping was deemed not very important by Chinese outbound tourists to Australia.…”

Bagged fuzzy clustering for fuzzy data: An application to a tourism market

“…To capture Chinese travellers' perceptions, 21 image attributes measured the tourism product generally offered to Chinese travellers such as attractive scenery and natural attractions and cultural/historical attractions, and the more general images of Western Europe such as cities with modern technology, quality accommodation, and quality tourist services [60,63,65,66,73]. The items were measured on a bipolar 7-point Likert scale anchored on [1] Offers very little and [7] Offers very much.…”