People will explore every corner of the world and experience a variety of cultures in the 21st century; as a result the world economy will prosper around the tourism industry. People often want to try local foods when they visit a foreign place, and t...
People will explore every corner of the world and experience a variety of cultures in the 21st century; as a result the world economy will prosper around the tourism industry. People often want to try local foods when they visit a foreign place, and their experience with local food helps them meet local or traditional food of the place. A New kind of tourism that is designed to experience local eccentric food has started.
The objective of this study is to analyze expectations before a travel and satisfaction after the travel by tourists’ motive and how the level of satisfaction influences overall evaluation of the tour. To this end, I selected specific types of tours whose main theme is local food and participated in the tours.
The results are summarized as follows; Firstly, to find out participants’ expectation and satisfaction toward food tour program by its motives, I conducted t-test on preliminary analysis.
Secondly, in verifying hypothesis, I carried out element analysis toward the motives and satisfaction to assess credential and relevance of them. Afterwards, using two-step cluster as factor analysis, I divided subjects into two groups. To identify characteristics of two groups, I conducted cross-analysis between demographic features and groups categorized by their motives.
Thirdly, to verify the hypothesis that ‘there are differences in expectation toward the travel program depending on their motives’ I took t-test comparison and it turned out that there are certain levels of differences in the expectation in the two groups.
Fourthly, to verify the hypothesis that ‘there are differences in satisfaction of the travel program depending on their motives’ I took t-test comparison and it turned out that there is no difference in satisfaction in the two groups.
Fifthly, to verify the hypothesis that ‘there are differences in satisfaction and expectation of the travel program depending on their motives’ I looked into gap among the groups by comparing the average of dissatisfaction and took response sample t-test on expectation and satisfaction by each factor of the program.
Sixthly, to verify the hypothesis that ‘the extent of satisfaction influences overall evaluation of the tour program’ I conducted Multiple Regression Analysis on satisfaction factor and the evaluation (repeat purchasing and intent to recommend to others) and the result says that the level of satisfaction affects the overall assessment.
The study represents the following limitations and lessons. Depending on the motives, there are differences in preferred types of tour among the tourists so the tourism industry should develop customer-oriented travel program targeting specific segment. Through analysis of expectation-satisfaction or study on expectation and satisfaction by its motives, I was able to assess experience tour program, which provided me with snapshot on current status of national travel programs. I concluded that we need to develop new program that can supplement the current ones and help food travel program perceived as major type of tour by Korean people. The study, though, has been conducted targeting Seoul and metropolitan area residents and using short distance autumn food travel program to ChungCheong and Gangwon, two to three hours drive away from Seoul. In addition, even though there are myriad of variables that may affect overall evaluation of the program, the study confined itself to four variables, or satisfaction factors. It is therefore necessary more study to be conducted so as to overcome the above limitations.