Self Congruity and the Impact of Customer Satisfaction on Tourist loyalty

Transcription

1 Self Congruity and the Impact of Customer Satisfaction on Tourist loyalty Muhannad M.A Abdallat, Ph.D. Assistant Professor Hesham El Sayed El - Emam, Ph.D. Assistant Professor Department of Tourism and Hospitality, Faculty of Tourism and Archeology King Saud University ABSTRACT Tourism has rapidly grown into the world s largest industry, surpassing autos, steel, electronics, and agriculture The Tourism is one sector in which most countries claim have some comparative advantage mostly evolve into arena of fierce competition in which marketing has become an important element of tourism management. Curiously, past research efforts in the tourism industry have tended to focus on what tourists buy, when they buy, where they buy, and how they buy, but not so much on why they buy This question of why brings us to a micro-level analysis tourism development. In this context among other thing the literature explains the self concept literature in consumer research helps explain the psychological underpinnings of travel self-congruity involves a process of matching a tourist s self-concept to a destination visitor image, The data for this study was collected from international tourists whom had visited Penang. A total of 400 questionnaires were sent out with 145 returned (response rate of percent), out of which only 100 were usable (usable

2 rate of percent). This research focused on two types of self-image (ideal and actual). Specifically, ideal self-image has a positive influence on destination loyalty. The data of 100 respondents gathered through convenience sampling from the departure hall of the Penang International.

3 Self-Image/Product-Image Congruity The discussion of self-concept and product-image congruity was initiated by Gardner and Levy (1955) and Levy (1959). The main attention was focused upon the image projected by various products. Consumers were thought to prefer products with images, which are congruent with their self-concept. Grubb and Grathwohl (1967) formally proposed that "... The consuming behavior of an individual will be directed toward furthering and enhancing his self-concept throughout the consumption of goods as symbols" (p. 26). Self-image/product-image congruity specifically refers to the match or mismatch of one or more actual self-image, or ideal self-image, social selfimage, or ideal social self-image with the corresponding personality images of the designated product. The match between actual self-image and product image has been referred to as "self-congruity"; between ideal self-image and product image "ideal congruity"; between social self-image and product image as "social congruity"; and between ideal social self-image and product image as "ideal social congruity" (Sirgy 1979, 1980, 1981a; Samli and Sirgy 1981). The congruence between these two sets of constructs (product image and self-concept) has been modeled using a variety of distance measures such as, the Euclidean distance, absolute difference, simple difference, and

4 difference squared indices (Birdwell, 1968; Dolich 1969; Ross 1971; Schewe and Dillon 1978; Sirgy 1979, 1980). The issue whether product image interact with one or more self-perspectives such as, the actual self-image, the ideal self-image, the social self-image, and the ideal social self-image has been addressed by Sirgy (1981b, d). Many studies have treated self-image/product-image congruity only and exclusively in terms of a single congruity effect, namely self-congruity (i.e., involving only the actual self-image) (e.g., Grubb & Stern 1971; Birdwell 1968; Bellenger, Steinberg, & Stanton 1976; Hughes & Guerrero 1971; Green, Maheshwari & Roa 1969). Most of these studies provided support for the relationship between self-congruity and consumer choice. Many other studies have been found to assess the independent effects of ideal self-image versus actual self-image (or ideal congruity versus selfcongruity) on consumer choice (e.g., Dolich 1969; Ross 1971; Sirgy 1979, 1980; Munson 1974; Belch 1978; Dornoff and Tatham 1972). The overall pattern of findings in regards to the differential effects of multiple congruities seems at best equivocal (Sirgy 1980a). 4 Customer loyalty A lot of studies on the topic of loyalty have been measured by behavioral aspect of brand loyalty, such as repeat purchase without considering cognitive aspects of brand loyalty (Choong, 1998). For instance, Fader and Schmittlein Fader, P & Schmittlein, D 1993, Excess Behavioural Loyalty for High-Share Brands: Deviations from the Dirichlet Model for Repeat Purchasing, Journal of Marketing Research, no. 30, vol. 4, pp (1993) conducted a research investigating the

5 advantage of high share brands in brand loyalty, suggesting that high share brands have significantly higher brand loyalty than low hare brands. Newman & Werbel (1973) also described loyal customer as those who repurchase a brand considered only that brand and did not brand related information seeking. However, all of them suffer from a problem that is they measured brand loyalty only by the behavioral aspect of repeat purchase. Another definition of brand loyalty that is offered by Jacoby and chestnut (1978) can balance the incompleteness of Wilkie s definition. Jacoby and Chestnut provided a conceptual definition of brand loyalty that brand loyalty is (1) biased (i.e., non-random), (2) behavioral response (i.e., purchase), (3) expressed over time, (4) by some decision- making unit, (5) with respect to one or more brands out of a set of such brands, and is a function of psychological (decision-making, evaluative) processes. In their operational definition of brand loyalty they identified three kids of categories, which can be placed into behavioral, attitudinal, and composite, both attitudinal and behavioral. Based on the behavioral element of brand loyalty, Sheth (1991) provides an operational definition of brand loyalty that is brand loyalty is a function of a brand s relative frequency of purchase in both time-independent and time dependent situation. An operational definition of brand loyalty based on the attitudinal element was provided by Reynolds et. Al. (1974). They suggested brand loyalty as the tendency for a person to continue over time to show similar attitude in situation similar to those he/she previously encountered. Dick and Basu (1994) proposed that loyalty should be evaluated with both

6 attitudinal and behavioral criteria (Composite brand loyalty). Later, Oliver comes out with his operational definition of loyalty, which is more comprehensive or repatronize a preferred product of service consistently in the future, thereby causing repetitive of same brand or same brand set purchasing despite situational influences and marketing efforts having the potential to cause switching behavior. From the conceptual and operational definition of brand loyalty, we can get the two most important elements of brand loyalty: attitude and behavior. Customer loyalty consists of brand loyalty (Dick and Basu 1994) has been described as a behavioral response and as a function of psychological processes (Jacoby and Chestnut, 1978). There are two dimensions to customer loyalty: behavioral and attitudinal (Baldinger and Rubinson 1996). The behavioral dimension refers to a customer s behavior on repeat purchase, indicating a preference for a brand or service consistently over time (Oliver 1997). While attitudinal dimensions refers to favorable customer intention to repurchase and recommend, which are good indicator of a loyal customer (James and Sasser 1995; Dick and Basu 1994). A customer who has the intention to repurchase and recommend is very likely yo remain with the company. For a customer to remain loyal he or she must believe that the firm s service continues to server the best choice alternative. Furthermore, he/she will be less sensitive to the price of the service.

7 FINDINGS OF THE STUDY Multiple Regression Analysis for the Relationship between Self Image and Loyalty The relationships between the variables that have been explored provide a basis for us to verify the influences among the variables in this study. Hence, multiple regression analyses were employed with the direct relationships investigated. shown in Table The Relationship between Self-Image (ideal and actual) and Loyalty Independent Variables Beta standardized Model 1 Ideal Self-image.32* Actual Self-image.23** R 2.24 Adj. R 2.23 F Value Durbin-Watson 1.68 Note: *Sig. at.01 **Sig. at.05, Dependent Variable = Loyalty The model investigated was found to be significant at p<0.01 with 24 percent ability in explaining the variance in loyalty. Both independent variables were found to have a positive impact on loyalty. Chiefly, ideal selfimage (β =.32) was found to have a positive influence at p<0.01, whereas actual self-image (β =.23) was significant at p<0.05. This denotes the first step in Baron and Kenny s (1986) test of mediation, in which we have sufficient evidence to believe that this relationship might be mediated by a third variable

8 DISCUSSION AND CONCLUSION Influence of Self Image (Actual and Ideal) on Tourist Loyalty As a reiteration of the literature, this study developed actual and ideal selfimage to reflect the higher order construct of destination image. Much attention has been devoted to understand a dynamic structure of destination image; particularly when current destinations have been more competitive with other destination markets. This is reflected in the current devaluing of the ringgit (i.e. a reflection in the declined of the US currency) which saw many tourists from many countries around the region flocking into Malaysia. Hence it is our study's interest to understand the destination attractiveness as well as market competitiveness of the tourists through two important constructs of self image, i.e. actual and ideal image. In general, image can be referred as the sum of beliefs, ideas, and impression that people have of a place or destination (; Baloglu & Brinberg, 1997) Ideal self-image reflects how the tourists wants to be perceived by others, while actual image reflects the tourist perception on him-/herself. Although we are aware that Sirgy (1982) had developed a multidimensional model of self concept, which consists of actual self, ideal self, social self, ideal social self, expected self, situational self and global self-attitude, there is still a lack of literature establishing how these dimensions generate customer loyalty. They remain at a stage where an understanding of customer satisfaction through the said dimensions remains in void of how loyalty can be reinforced at the

9 tourist level. Secondly, we do not want to presuppose the existence of establish links between the remaining dimensions and loyalty. But, this study took a step further and relied on the more acceptable dimensions of actual and ideal self, subsequently rendering an explanation to their relationships with customer loyalty. Further links should be tested by future researchers with regards to customer loyalty. This study strongly holds true that the additional dimensions of social self, ideal social self, expected self, situational self and global self-attitude are just forms of interaction outcomes between the ideal and actual self. Due to the need of maximizing our explanatory power, this study departs from the positivist method of scrutinizing and splitting hairs, resulting in overlapping in the interpretation of the same dimensions. Therefore, the aforementioned reasons propel this research to categorize selfconcept into ideal and actual self-image for a parsimonious understanding of customer satisfaction/loyalty. Our study discovered that there is a positive influence of self-image (ideal and actual) on customer loyalty. This is of no surprise, judging by the fact that all typologies of self-image are based on the perceptions towards the attributes and attractions available within a destination area (Gartner, 1993). In addition, loyalty packages from various tourist operators and the government s efforts in various campaigns (e.g. Visit Malaysia Year) are influential in appealing towards the ideal and self image of the international tourists. One respondent noted that the friendly people very much as I imagine is influential in his intention to revisit and recommend Penang as a tourist attraction to his friend. Words and phrases such as more relax,

10 free, I hope my friends can see me now and part of me shows that their self image (actual and ideal) has been tapped to address loyalty. Theoretical Implications From the theoretical point of view, these findings add a significant meaning to both consumer behavior literature and tourism marketing literature. The findings in this study clearly indicate the varying importance of the tourist's self-concept (ideal and actual self image) and his/her satisfaction/dissatisfaction with tourism. Its most important theoretical contribution is that the consumer's satisfaction/dissatisfaction in the destination involves the evaluation of not only its actual but its ideal self image. More importantly, the effects of ideal self image to satisfaction could be carried to generate destination loyalty.

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