Literature Review On Tourists’ Revisit Intention And Satisfaction

Consumer loyalty is magnificently vital to a product and service in every industry. It is six times more costly to attract new consumers than retain the loyal ones. The loyal consumers are deemed to have 10 times more value than the price of a single purchase. They act as another channel in promoting the product and service through informal recommendation and word of mouth to friends, relatives, and other potential travellers to a destination. As a result, this certainly helps the service providers to gain more revenue as well as reduce marketing cost. The loyal consumers tend to positively recommend to 3 people if they are satisfied with the service, and spread the negative expression to 11 people if they are dissatisfied. Accordingly, positive satisfaction has a positive influence on consumer loyalty.

Recommendation (word of mouth) to others is one of the sources of information in which people who are interested to travel take into account for considering destination selection. The word of mouth recommendation is habitually carried by the repeated visitors. It is considered to be perilous to tourism marketing as the potential tourists tend to search for and perceive it as a reliable source. Eccentrically, tourists who are satisfied from the trip experience have high potential to recommend the destination to others, but not to repeat visitation in the future. Despite the abundant number of researches on antecedents of destination loyalty, there is no general agreement among researchers regarding the antecedents of revisit intention.

Consumer Satisfaction

Satisfaction has been theoretically delineated as the tourist’s emotional state which is developed at post-visitation stage where the tourist has experienced the trip at the selected destination. It is the expression of overall pleasure constructed by the tourist after the trip. Unlike the cognitive component of attitude which emphasise on perception, satisfaction is categorised as an affective attitude to a product or service. Satisfaction has empirical been proven to influence the consumer loyalty to a product and service in many studies. Satisfaction has revealed a positive correlation to the post-purchase behavior, particularly in the process of repurchase in the future. Regarding the study of Baker and Crompton in tourism industry, the satisfaction manifestly has an impact on tourist’s revisit intention in the future. The higher positive satisfaction definitely leads to higher likelihood of revisit intention. Tourists tend to provide the satisfaction rating in accordance with their entire experience. Tourist expectations, which are primarily influenced by marketing, word of mouth and experience, have considerable impact on the evaluation. The higher the expectations are, the higher the tendency that consumers will be frustrated, and vice versa.

Destination Image

When examining destination image, most studies (e. g. , Baloglu & McCleary, 1999; Echtner & Ritchie, 1993) focus on functional and psychological attributes such as landscape/surroundings, na- ture, cultural attractions, nightlife and entertainment, shopping facilities, residents' receptiveness, and safety. Nadeau et al. (2008) report that natural environment beliefs (about scenery, wilderness, and activities) and built environment beliefs (about nightlife, shopping, and sports) have positive significant effects on destination evaluation (memorability, satisfaction, etc. ). Bigne Alcaniz et al. (2009) examine the functional-psychological continuum of a cognitive image and analyse its relationship with a destination's overall image and behavioural intentions. Functional components include more tangible or measurable characteristics such as shopping facilities, local transport, sports facilities, and historic sites/museums. Psychological components refer to more abstract and intangible characteristics such as friendliness, hospitality, and tranquillity.

The authors report positive significant effects of functional components on overall image and intention to return, and positive effects of the psychological dimension on overall image and intention to recommend. In line with this view, Russell (1980) stipulates that individuals first rely on the information that they collect about the destination environment and then develop a state of emotion towards that destination. Thus, according to the author, the cognitive image precedes the affective one.