入境旅游市场是中国大力发展的市场,对该市场进行细分可依据多种变量,国外的相关研究证明旅游动机是非常有用的市场细分变量。本研究以桂林、阳朔的入境旅游者为例,以旅游动机为变量对中国入境旅游市场进行细分。因子分析提取出四个动机因子:梦幻/身体的、放松、文化、娱乐,其中文化动机是入境旅游者的最主要动机。以这四个动机因子为基础对入境旅游者进行K-均值聚类分析,发现存在三类具有不同主导动机的入境旅游者:放松型、需求多样型和文化型,三类旅游者在年龄、婚姻状况、国籍、旅行组织和旅行同伴等特征上存在明显差异,这些发现对旅游目的地进行针对性的市场营销,提高营销效率非常有帮助。

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.