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THE INFLUENCE OF AN ANALYSIS OF THE PERCEIVED DISTANCE ON TOURISM DESTINATION IMAGE——A Case Study of the Perceived Image of Tourist in Five Origin Cities on Zhouzhuang, Suzhou |
ZHANG Hong-mei1, LU Lin1, ZHANG Jin-he1,2 |
1. College of National Territorial and Tourism, Anhui Normal University, Wuhu 241000, China;
2. Department of Urban and Resources Sciences, Nanjing University, Nanjing 210093, China |
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Abstract Tourism destination image is a very important factor to influence tourism behavior. Taking Zhouzhuang in Suzhou as a case, this paper selects five cities of different distance from Zhouzhua(Shanghai, Nanjing,Hefei, Jinan, Chengdu) as sampling region, applies quantitative methods to analyze Zhouzhaung's tourism image and distance's influence on tourism image. The finding discovers that tourists and potential tourists from different distances have different perceived images on Zhouzhuang, distance difference mainly exists in cognitive and evaluation image, and no distance difference exists in total image:The farther the distance is, the lower the degree of knowing the cognitive and evaluation items is; The degree of knowing holistic cognitive image is greater, attribute cognitive image is lower; The farther the distance is, the greater the degree of good fame of cognitive and evaluation image is. In total, Zhouzhaung is an unsophisticated and beautiful region of rivers and lakes. The tourism image of Zhouzhuang is basically positive, but the degree of good fame is not very great, meanwhile, there are bad images like heavily trade atmosphere and crowd. Zhouzhuang can carry out it's image and market strategy based on the character that the degree of knowing is higher and the degree of good fame is lower in near market, the degree of knowing is lower and the degree of good fame is higher in farther market. Future research can select other case region and sample region, and apply more methods such as the integration of questionnaire and interview. Otherwise, the other impact factors that influence tourism destination image such as experience, information, demographics can be studied in the background of Chinese culture.
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Received: 12 September 2005
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