Index

Abstract

The growing power of the Internet, mobile technology and smart phones has offered new marketing services in tourism industry. Mobile marketing services becomes the most important factor in creating of marketing strategies. This study consider tourism mobile marketing application types in six major aspects: transportation, accommodation, food, tour, community and other, combined with Technology Acceptance Model of usefulness, ease of use and interesting; Analyze of the satisfaction and importance of users by Importance Performance Analysis (IPA). The results showed: user perception of each application in tourism mobile marketing, important susceptibility is higher than satisfaction; ease of use is the most important; real time and correct information are important, but not in good satisfactory, should be in the most need to improve.

Keywords: Tourism mobile marketing, User perception, Importance performance analysis.

Received: 16 November 2016 / Revised: 29 December 2016 / Accepted:6 January 2017/ Published: 20 January 2017

Contribution/ Originality

This study contributes in the existing literature to examine tourism mobile marketing application types in Taiwan, consider those application types in six major aspects, analyze the satisfaction and importance of users by Importance Performance Analysis (IPA).


1. INTRODUCTION

There are more and more people who seek hotels and restaurants on mobile devices. Mobile marketing services has more significant role in the promotion of tourism. With more than one billion smartphones in use in the market today (Business Wire, 2012) Here will be explained some types of mobile marketing channels that can be useful for tourism industry, depending on their target users preferences (Rayfield, 2010) :Mobile Applications: apps are a good way to connect with consumers, as they can be easier to use than the mobile web. Some apps allow for adverts within the applications design too; In comparison with traditional methods of advertising, the main advantage of mobile advertising is that it can reach the target customers anywhere anytime, in order to promote the selling of tourism products or services (Karthikeyan and Balamurgan, 2012).

2. IPA (IMPORTANCE-PERFORMANCE ANALYSIS)

Importance-performance analysis (IPA) is based on a set of theoretical contributions, particularly the multi-attribute and expectancy-value models (Rosenberg, 1956; Wilkie and Pessemier, 1973; Fishbein and Ajzen, 1975). IPA has been widely used in service industries such as marketing (Novatorov, 1997) tourism (Evans and Chon, 1989; Hollenhorst et al., 1992; Duke and Mont, 1996; Zhang and Chow, 2004) . IPA is a useful evaluation tool to find out attributes that are doing well and attributes that need to be improved (Wong et al., 2009). This IPA evaluation tool is used to prescribe the attributes for improvement and also provide guidance for strategic development (Slack, 1994).

Using performance on the x-axis and importance on the y-axis, the two dimensional IPA model is divided into four quadrants. As a result, Concentrate Here, Keep up the Good Work, Low Priority, and Possible Overkill are created is four quadrants. An example of IPA framework is shown in Figure 1. IPA is used to evaluate the level of importance attach to the benefits and also to examine the level of satisfaction to find out attributes that are doing well and attributes that need to be improved, which require actions immediately.

Figure-1. The original IPA framework.

Source: Martilla and James (1977)

3. TOURISM MOBILE MARKETING

3.1. Variable Define

A revised technology acceptance model to include a perceived enjoyment construct, adapted from Davis et al. (1992); Moon and Kim (2001)and Van Der Heijden (2004). Combined with Technology Acceptance Model perceived usefulness, perceived ease of use and enjoyment  this study consider tourism mobile marketing application types in six major aspects: transportation, accommodation, food, tour, community and other,; Analyze of the satisfaction and importance by Importance Performance Analysis (IPA). Through questionnaire investigation quantitative statistics and the IPA analysis way, understanding user on tourism mobile marketing application real needs. This study questionnaire item in the following table:

Variable defined:

1. perceived ease of use: users believe that using technology in their work or life/ease of service
2. perceived usefulness: users believe that using technology/services can increase in work or in life itself, and help future
3. enjoyment: users consider using technology/service can feel funny

Table-1. variables defined and questionnaire item

variables variables defined questionnaire item
perceived usefulness user perceived mobile marketing messages helpful during the trip
  1. information is accurate and useful
  2. Information updates quickly in real time
  3. Is ready to share as recommended by the (Line, and FB ...)
  4. planning new neighborhood local tours
  5. overall usefulness
perceived ease of use users perceived ease of use searching the tourism information of ease
  1. easy to operate
  2. Content is easy to understand
  3. Easy to share or recommend
  4. mobile payment is the ease of use
  5. overall ease of use
enjoyment users feel fun by using tourism marketing information
  1. Content (text, pictures, movies) is a lively and interesting
  2. Participate in community makes me want to explore sharing
  3. Real-time information sharing makes me happy
  4. AR guide is fun
  5. tourist destinations news(events, store offers news, local weather) is attractive
  6. overall enjoyment

3.2. Demographic Characteristics of the Sample

Data collection for experienced users was conducted in April and June 2013. Total of 500 questionnaires were returned. 48 of the questionnaires were excluded from the analysis due to late arrival. The final response rate obtained was 90.4%. The sample included a 52% of men than women, a larger proportion (85%) of subjects with university education. However, these differences were not very large and the differences in the distributions were according to what one could expect of new users of a mobile marketing service (innovators). Thus, we assume that the sample demographics correspond well to the population demographics of new tourism mobile marketing service adopters.

3.3. IPA Analysis

This study find the importance of user perception of tourism marketing application is higher than satisfaction, that is exist service gap of quality. This is the tourist information supplier(tour operators or tourist spots charge) must seek to understand users ' needs and expectations, to design the most appropriate for the user's tourism marketing application.

Quadrant I(High Importance/Low Performance: Attributes that fall into this quadrant represent key areas that need to be improved with top priority: information is accurate and useful, Information updates quickly in real time, Is ready to share as recommended by the (Line, and FB ...), planning new neighborhood local tours, overall usefulness (perceived usefulness), tourist destinations news(events, store offers news, local weather) is attractive(enjoyment).

Quadrant II (High Importance/High Performance): All attributes that fall into this quadrant are the strength and pillar of the organizations, and they should be the pride of the organizations: easy to operate, Content is easy to understand, overall ease of use (perceived ease of use).

Quadrant III (Low Importance/Low Performance): Thus, any of the attributes that fall into this quadrant are not important and pose no threat to the organizations: Content (text, pictures, movies) is a lively and interesting, Participate in community makes me want to explore sharing, Real-time information sharing makes me happy, AR guide is fun ,overall enjoyment(enjoyment)
Quadrant IV (Low Importance/High Performance): It denotes attributes that are overly emphasized by the organizations: Easy to share or recommend, moblie payment is the ease of use (perceived ease of use).

Figure-2. Tourism marketing IPA matrix

Source: This study results

4. CONCLUSION

The results showed: User perception of each application in tourism mobile marketing, important susceptibility is higher than satisfaction; ease of use is the most important; tourism characteristics of self-propelled planners Application Marketing on tourism action high in package; real time and correct information are important, but not in good satisfactory, should be in the most need to improve.

Tourism marketing perceived ease of use more user attention and users perceived usefulness and perceived ease of use is subject to considerable attention. If it can be applied against the overall interest of improvement, but will also strengthen the willingness of users to use tourism marketing applications. During three stages in the travel process, how to let the user perception of tourism marketing, future forward attitude is the important issue.

Funding: This study received no specific financial support.

Competing Interests: The author declares that there are no conflicts of interests regarding the publication of this paper.

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