Vacation ownership: Understanding the senior market

Abstract

Tammie J. Kaufmanhas over 25 years of experience in the hotel, restaurant and travel industry. She has worked in all facets of the industry from management to line-employee positions. She has been teaching at Rosen College for four years. Randall Upchurchis professor of timeshare development at Rosen College. Dr Upchurch has over 21 years of experience in the lodging industry. In his present position Dr Upchurch is actively working with the American Resort Development Association to deliver a minor in timeshare development. Denver Severthas been an associate professor at Rosen College for three years. Prior to this, Denver taught for seven years at Eastern Michigan University. His research pivots around topics that relate to the customer ' s path to loyalty. Before joining academia, Denver worked in restaurant venues and country clubs for 25 years. He teaches graduate and undergraduate courses in accounting and guest service management for Rosen College. AbstractThis study concerns consumer usage preferences relating to a leading timeshare developer ' s vacation club product. The discriminant analysis procedure was performed on the developer ' s year-end dataset to determine if there were any differences based upon the age of the timeshare owner concerning their product preferences. It was discovered that the older timeshare owner is more drawn to utilising products and services provided by their designated home resort while, in contrast, the younger timeshare owner is more likely to use timeshare exchange options and more inclined to purchase an additional timeshare interval at another company ' s resort.

The evolution and consolidation of the timeshare industry in a developing economy: The South African experience

“…Haylock (1994aHaylock ( , 1994b, Upchurch & Gruber (2002) and Powanga & Powanga (2008) demonstrate that as an accommodation product timeshare has increasingly evolved and influenced shifts in the broader lodging sector within which it is located. Currently timeshare as a product can be found throughout the world in a variety of forms from single holiday flats, luxury condominiums, hotel destination resorts, mixed resorts, and single urban tourist hotels, to cruise ships, boats, villas, yachts and exclusive five star apartments (Kaufman et al, 2006). From precarious beginnings timeshare has emerged as a profitable and dynamic branch of property development and several international corporations have branded the timeshare industry with their expanding scope of development and long-term business planning (Deng, 2013).…”

“…The development of new market segments or niches for marketing the timeshare product has been another facet of improved marketing for timeshare sales in developed countries where there is much attention to seniors (Kaufman et al, 2006). In addition to marketing issues another important and overlapping cluster of work around timeshare relates to the management of timeshare resorts (Upchurch & Lashley, 2006).…”

Timeshare and vacation ownership executives’ analysis of the industry and the future

“…The majority of the research has focused on consumer behavior, and the marketing aspects of the vacation ownership industry ( Woodside et al , 1985 ;Weaver and Lawton, 1999 ;Crotts and Ragatz, 2002 ;Rezak, 2002 ;Woods and Clark, 2002 ;Crotts et al , 2005 ;Kaufman et al , 2005 ;McCain et al , 2005 ). Research has explored resort amenities and their utilization by owners ( Kaufman et al , 2006 ;Stringam, 2008 ). Other studies have examined owner satisfaction, niche markets and fi nite geographic markets ( Liu et al , 2001 ; .…”

Vacation ownership: Gender positioning

“…1 With this growth there has been limited research to understand and better defi ne the potential timeshare consumer. Relative to understanding consumer characteristics Kaufman 3 have begun to segment the timeshare market based on age and found that there are indeed signifi cant consumption differences based on the age of a timeshare owner.…”