This Group package tour is one of the most popular travel patterns for many Asian countries. The intangibility and uncertainty of travel products make them difficult to reduce the risk of purchasing decision by display, and consumers thus often depend on related cues of the product for purchase decision when purchasing travel products.
Shopping arrangement is one of the indispensible parts of group package tour and it is also an activity that largely affects tourist experience and tour quality. Empirical study for the effects of shopping-spot types and shopping arrangement on the consumers’ pre-purchasing evaluations (i.e., expected product quality, perceived risk and willingness to buy) is still wanting to provide reference for travel agents to design and plan their itineraries.
In order to clarify the effects of shopping-spot types and shopping arrangement on the consumers’ pre-purchasing evaluations, a 2 × 2 mixed factorial design was used in this study – with two shopping-spot types (between subjects): product-orientation and process- orientation and two shopping-spot arrangements (within subjects): tourist shopping-habitat and official tour-itinerary– to examine these effects on the consumers’ pre-purchase evaluations (i.e., expected product quality, perceived risk and willingness to buy).
Convenience sampling was used in this study for departing passengers in the departure hall at Taiwan Taoyuan International Airport to examine the hypotheses of this study. Results of this study indicated that process-oriented shopping spot with official tour-itinerary were preferred for the subjects. On the contrary, product-oriented shopping spot with tourist shopping-habitat were less preferred for the subjects. Furthermore, some implications for academics and management and suggestions for further research are also provided in the end of this study according to the results of this study.
