Abstract：Inbound tourism market is stressed by Chinese tourism industry. It can be segmented by many variables. As one of the variables, motivation is proved to be very useful in market segmentation. This paper provides a case study of inbound tourists in Guilin and Yangshuo, segments Chinese inbound tourism market by motivation, and analyzes the differences of tourists' motivation, demographic and trip characteristics. The measurement scale of tourist motivation is adapted from previous researches. The data from over 600 tourists visiting Guilin and Yangshuo is collected during October and November 2008, the response rate was 95.6%, 602 tourists' data is used in this research. In this study, Varimax factor analysis is used to extract motivation factors, and K-means cluster is used to cluster inbound tourists based on motivation factors. The results indicate that four motivation factors play the great role, which are fantasy/physical, relaxation, culture, and entertainment. Cultural motivation is the dominant motivation of inbound tourists. K-means cluster finds three types of tourists who have different dominant motivation, which are relaxation-seeking, want-it-all, and culture-seeking. These three types of tourists show different characteristics on age, marriage status, nationality, travel organization and companion. The dominant motivations of relaxation-seeking tourists are relaxation, emotionally and physically refreshment. The biggest segment market is want-it-all tourists, who have multiple main motivations and seek to satisfy their many needs. The distributions of age and marriage status of the second cluster tourists are similar with the first cluster tourists. The main motivations of culture-seeking tourists are to gain knowledge of the new places, to visit historical and cultural sites. This type of tourists are older, married and like group travel more. But this study cannot find any difference of three types of tourists on gender, education, decision-making time, and time to stay. These findings are very helpful to tailored marketing and marketing efficiency improving.
张宏梅, 陆林, 朱道才. 基于旅游动机的入境旅游者市场细分策略——以桂林阳朔入境旅游者为例[J]. 人文地理, 2010, 25(4): 126-131,119.
ZHANG Hong-mei, LU Lin, ZHU Dao-cai. SEGMENTATION INBOUND TOURISTS BY THEIR MOTIVATION——A Case Study of Inbound Tourists in Guilin and Yangshuo. HUMAN GEOGRAPHY, 2010, 25(4): 126-131,119.
