MODELLING AND SEGMENTING THE FUTURE VALUE OF CRUISE TOURISTS: AN EMPIRICAL STUDY OF CHINA MAINLAND, HONG KONG, AND TAIWAN
CHEN Mei1, LIU Jing-jing2, CUI Feng2, LI Xin-jian3, PAN Lan4
1. Department of Spatial Economics, VU Amsterdam, Amsterdam 1081HV, The Netherlands;
2. School of Management, Xiamen University, Xiamen 361005, China;
3. School of Management, Beijing International Studies University, Beijing 100024, China;
4. Department of Hospitality Management, Tourism College of Zhejiang, Hangzhou 311231, China
Abstract Since the 1980s, modern cruise, as a leisure vacation, has become one of the most popular options for middle-class in Europe and North America. According to the theory of customer lifespan value, our research estimated the future value of cruise tourists, and upgraded the previous research scale of foreign cruise tourists' preference by exploratory factors analysis and confirmatory factors analysis, in order to build the model of cruise tourists' future value. Based on the dataset of cruise tourists from China mainland, Hong Kong, and Taiwan, the measurement model of cruise tourists' future value was tested through structural equation modelling in program of AMOS21.0. Ultimately, our study found some significant impact factors of cruise tourists' future value and applied the empirical result into cruise market segmentation, using of R13.0 to do latent cluster analysis of the significant determinants of cruise tourists' future value, in order to recognize the most valuable segment and efficient marketing strategy.Specific results show that the cruise tourism income level, revisit frequency, the route length, consume preference for infrastructure and recreational facilities have a significant positive impact on the future value of cruise tourists.
2017, Vol. 32 
