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A summary
A modern tourist demands new destinations and unique entertainment, and forces travel agencies to find new services and an improve existing one. The extreme destination, Eskimo villages and arctic landscapes, has been changed influenced by new technologies and transport networks. the main trends in this destination are increasing number of tourists and lower prices, better transport facilities and improved services. Thus, the main challenge for hospitality industry is that uncertainty exists in the purchasing-consumption cycle, since present purchases are made for future consumption. Purchasing decisions are affected by the customer’s life space segmented into an action and an orientation space. The orientation includes numerous economic, psychological, and source factors influencing buyer behavior.
Introduction
During the last ten years, hospitality industry has been influenced by changing social and economic conditions, technological innovations and new needs and demands of the tourists. For hospitality managers, understanding tourist behavior is one of the more perplexing tasks confronting marketing managers. Difficulty arises from the heterogeneity of buyers, from their being groups of individuals who differ from one another. But differences notwithstanding, consumers do share attitudes, opinions, reactions, and desires at various times. Recent years, extreme tourism and destinations become popular among global tourists. Many of them want to visit isolated territories with indigenous community and their lifestyle. Fascination with the Far North and especially with the Eskimos whose culture enabled them to survive despite the duress of Arctic cold, has lured many individuals to adventure there.
The literature selected for research can be divided into two main parts: theoretical layer and research studies. Baldacchino (2006) and Keskitalo (2004) propose the most recent statistical results and analysis of this destination and its main trends. They analyze modern tourists’ tastes and wants, demands and expectations. Turner (2003) and Powers & Barrows (2002) evaluate changes and influences in hospitality industry and its opportunities. In hospitality, consumption and purchasing are usually treated as separate and distinct activities. However, from a systems perspective, and in the broadest and most realistic terms, the consumption process includes more than the actual use of goods and services and the activities of household consumers. Evans (2002), Notzke (1999) and White (20040 analyze Eskimos tourist destination and the main trends affected it. they underline that extreme entertainment encompasses significant factors surrounding purchasing decisions and buyer behavior, the consumption of services per se, and the setting in which they are consumed.
Arctic destination was popular many years ago, but it can be afforded by high social classes because of high costs and unusual entertainment. One of the main trend in this destination is increasing number of tourists each year who wants to visit Eskimo villages and see arctic landscapes. According to statistical results, each year this segment grows 5 % a year. Modern tourists live and act in a constantly changing cultural, social, technological, legal, and economic environment. Shaped by the environment, marketing institutions and activities in turn have an impact on it. The standards and values that stem from the environment greatly influence consumer behavior, affecting purchasing and consumption activities, and the business organizations concerned (White, 2004).
Following Turner (2003) a modern tourist demands exceptional services and unique destinations. In contrast to previous years when tourists were satisfied with low price, a modern tourist tries to combine a reasonable price and exceptional services. In transactions involving industrial goods, they usually are not. In extreme destinations, the consumer is king and the consumer guides businesses. Marketing endeavors to fuse consumer wants and needs with the operations of a business organization, which to survive and grow in a keenly competitive, Eskimo culture is now an attraction– an ethnic commodity of commercial value — but one that no longer exists in its traditional form. Progressive modernization has transformed Eskimo villages into what I term “white mans’ towns where Eskimo also live.” Tourists in the 1980s are surprised to find most Eskimo now live on a wage economy and in Western style. However, the stereotype of the Arctic climate and its snow-covered vastnesses is still an environmental asset (Notzke, 1999). Tourists want to see the “Midnight Sun” and momentarily experience the geographic conditions in the “Last Frontier” of America. For most tourists, the Arctic is a once-in-a-lifetime visit and it is ironic that high season tourism occurs in summer when warm, sunny days, flowering tundra, and ice-free seas are nearly the antithesis of tourist expectations. Despite industry efforts to promote off-season tourism, few individuals participate because they fear the very conditions they wish to know (White, 2004).
Since its inception with the cruise ships, modern tourism in the Alaskan Arctic has been almost exclusively an external operation, financed and managed to benefit the carriers by providing a passenger load. Aside from more frequent air service and lower rates generated by the tourist trade and some minor infrastructure improvements, the host population whose culture and environment are the tourist attractions have profited only tangentially from the tourist trade. Increased revenues from passenger traffic help to reduce freight rates and thus lower the cost of living, since most fresh foods — meat, bread, vegetables, and dairy products — are all shipped by air freight from Anchorage or Seattle (Ninemeier & Perdue 2007). Though summer tourists compete with the seasonal influx of business travelers, scientists, and engineering and construction crews for the use of limited facilities, a very small percentage of the host population derives any direct monetary benefit from tourism.
Tourism from 1990-2000 had a different impact on each of the two target communities of Kotzebue and Nome, because of variances in their local traditions and group involvement. Analysis of these disparities provides a clearer understanding of the historical process of tourism on the micro level. One cannot discuss “Eskimo tourism” in general but rather tourism in individual Eskimo centers as well as the incipient desire of the small outlying villages to participate for anticipated economic benefits. Twenty years ago, those who hoped to see a “real Eskimo village” were disappointed because habitations were the same weathered frame houses, and in summer most of the active hunting families had moved to camps located miles away. The villages were semi-deserted with minimal subsistence activity (White, 2004). Even if a dance performance could be arranged, the fee was fifty dollars. Further, adverse flying conditions frequently prevail in both areas, and to be “weathered” for several days is often disruptive to a travel itinerary (White, 2004). Elite ethnic tourism was a failure for the visitor, but villagers did not comprehend the reasons. They only recognized that when people came, they spent money that, no matter how limited, added to the minimal cash flow. To encourage more tourism became village goals but differentially expressed, according to the local micro-model (Turner, 2003).
The problem for hospitality industry is that tourists as consumers do not specify the products they will desire and, in fact, do not know their future wants. Yet executives are forced to forecast well in advance what consumers will decide to purchase. Thus marketing executives operate under conditions of great uncertainty. First, they cannot identify customers precisely — as individuals, families, households, or social and business groups (Turner, 2003). Second, although it is difficult to discover the scope of customer wants at any moment, it is even harder to predict their wants and needs over a period of time, since desires change, sometimes drastically and rapidly. Some of the changes stern from sociological and psychological factors; others are economically based (Davidson 2003). Third, it is hard to translate wants and needs into products and services that lead to profitable market opportunity.
In satisfying their wants and needs, buyers do not make decisions in a social vacuum. Their conclusions are shaped and influenced by relationships and experiences. Tourists occupying similar positions in a societal structure tend to respond to situations in much the same manner. Their responses are culturally patterned, and the particular society’s norms of behavior demand conformity. Because societal groups affect purchase and consumption patterns, buyers should be studied in relation to their reference groups — groups whose values and expectations are important to consumers in shaping what they ought to think or do. Such groups may be used both to determine consumers norms and as reference points to compare and position different consumer groups (Turner, 2003). “Hybrid landscapes are where we spend our lives, and, as much to the point, where most wild creatures spend theirs” (White 2004, p. 557).
According to Baldacchino (2006) the Eskimo villages of present-day are on the windy, often storm-battered southern coast of the Seward Peninsula. Native subsistence resources appear to have been minimal, and no archaeologic settlement is known. Nome was founded as a White town during the Gold Rush era when thirty thousand miners created a flourishing frontier city (Baldacchino, 2006). The Eskimo who now live there are in-migrants from a widespread region attracted to the wage economy of mining, barging, and other services. With one exception, no core group occurs. Several religious sects maintain churches, but most Eskimo appear to be drawn to the fundamentalist Covenant Mission, which discourages native aesthetics although it operates a radio station of region-wide importance because of partial programming in Eskimo.
The main challenge for hospitality industry is that uncertainty exists in the purchasing-consumption cycle, since present purchases are made for future consumption. The travel agent is constrained by limited resources and information. Somehow estimates must be made of the values expected by a variety of people from future consumption of goods purchased currently (Evans, 2002). This includes evaluating a myriad of products and services, translating them into purchasing decisions, and doing so efficiently. This process may even be more complex for some industrial goods. As a result of past experience, customers have preconceived notions or attitudes that shape their view of reality and hence their decisions.
For example, experience with brands that meet expectations results in future purchasing actions, since learning takes place (Keskitalo, 2004). Reinforcement, which is part of the learning process, encourages repetition and perhaps an automatic response-purchase by habit. Buyer behavior is also concerned with ways of reducing perceived risk. Two types of uncertainty inhere in product decisions. First, products may not be as functional or durable, or perform as well, as anticipated. Second, there is the risk of unfavorable product reflection on one’s self image. Product risk is a function of the degree of product knowledge, the price of the product, product visibility, and the social significance of products and their newness (Evans, 2002).
Some of the standards are rational and even rationalized, while others are unconscious and psychologically based. Some may be specified and others hidden. Yet, innovations are offered to this destination including new transport facilities and better hotels. The differences between the innovation and competing items are discernible to customers. Innovations should be different enough so that they elicit favorable purchase reactions. This is especially important in adaptive innovations (Keskitalo, 2004). In hospitality industry, marketing-mix decisions are affected directly by the how and why of customer and consumer behavior. Understanding tourist behavior is fundamental to the development of effective marketing systems (Powers & Barrows 2002). Significant relationships between consumption processes and corporate actions are investigated. From a broad perspective, the consumption process involves use behavior, evaluation behavior, and levels of interrelated systems among different groups.
Consumption is seen as a problem-solving process for physical and psychological, industrial, and household problems. Consumers provide the economic rationale for business activity. They direct business systems. Thus consumer life-style and life-space factors, which are significant purchase determinants, are also critical business forces (Powers & Barrows 2002). Consumer and customer wants and needs must be studied and understood to arrive at an effective marketing mix. Company demand, which depends on customer willingness and ability to buy, can be affected and shaped by marketing strategies. Both offerings and customer reactions may be altered. In this destination, generalizations relevant to tourist rejection, tourist autonomy, tourist dynamics, tourist demand, and tourist motives are stated. Buyer behavior is shaped by psychological and sociological as well as by economic factors. The former should not be classified as conational (White, 2004). Purchases made on emotional bases can indeed meet important consumer needs. Several useful behavioral models and concepts that help explain purchase response, as well as a chart of consumption as problem solving, are given (Powers & Barrows 2002).
During the last ten years, pricing becomes a sensitive and complex decision area affecting sales, costs, and profits for both industrial and consumer goods. For consumers, price reductions and increases have symbolic meanings. A customer may associate a price reduction with a reduction in quality, the anticipation of new models, or even lower prices or poor market acceptance (White, 2004). Higher prices may indicate better quality, a good image, and good value. Customer perceptions of price are important. Whereas pricing is usually perceived as a short-run action, its implications can be long-run, even to the point of shaping industry structures. Markets that may be viewed as systems of information on cost and demand determine the appropriateness of prices. They contain signals that businessmen must decode (Turner, 2003). But market information is ambiguous, fragmentary, and imperfect; it contains much uncertainty and is interpreted differently by various executives. To those who can read the signals properly, increased profits are the results. But invariably, pricing decisions are wrong and must be altered, as is evidenced by changing list prices. Thus, pricing is a process of adjustment in which incomplete data are used for important decisions. As new information is gathered, the offering can be adjusted in two ways: alteration of the price, or alteration of the product to meet the price (Evans, 2002).
Conclusion
In sum, today, tourists are relatively free to purchase what they please, limited, of course, by income, socio-economic status, legal business forces, and geographic setting. Manufacturers, wholesalers, and retailers thus find that ultimately they are governed by consumer reactions in the marketplace. In a sense, tourists “dictate” to the marketing system the goods and services they want, the prices they are willing to pay and how, where, and when they desire to purchase (Turner, 2003). Over time, profits are tied inextricably to the satisfaction of consumer wants. Consumers provide the economic rationale for business and marketing activity. The products and services offered for sale, the manner in which they are offered, the distribution channels employed, the methods of advertising and personal selling, and every other factor of marketing are all molded by consumer preferences, opinions, habits, beliefs, wants, needs, and desires. In this way, the total business system attempts to meet the desires of consumers. It is essential, therefore, that we analyze the antecedents of consumer behavior, the behavior itself, and the consequences of consumer reactions.
To do so, travel agents attempts to shape, change, and modify consumer behavior in order to bring it into line with corporate objectives and thereby gain competitive advantage. Hence, although consumers shape business activity, marketing programs are designed to influence consumer behavior. Changes in life styles and market environment have had a direct impact on goods and services produced, expenditures, and the consumption process. The effect of increased leisure time, suburban living, shopping centers, automatic vending machines, automobiles, television, and widespread geographic shifts on consumer wants and needs is pronounced. Eskimo themselves are quick to adopt and adapt, for picturesque as their aboriginal lives may have seemed in description, in actuality the darkness, the cold, and the fear of starvation, accident and illness were stark realities to be faced regularly. Extreme tourism can be seen as a real-life exposure to traditional Eskimo culture. Thus, this tourism has never been numerically pervasive and chronologically persistent.
Bibliography
Baldacchino, G. 2006, Extreme Tourism: Lessons from the World’s Cold Water Islands. Elsevier Science; 1 edition.
Davidson, M. C.G. Does organizational climate add to service quality in hotels? International Journal of Contemporary Hospitality Management. 2003 Vol. 15 #4 pp. 206 –213.
Evans, G. 2002, Between the Global and the Local There Are Regions, Culture Areas, and National States: A Review Article. Journal of Southeast Asian Studies, vol 33; p. 147.
Keskitalo, E. C.H. 2004, Negotiating the Arctic: The Construction of an International Region. Book by Routledge.
Ninemeier, J. D. Perdue, J. 2007, Discovering Hospitality and Tourism: The World’s Greatest Industry. Prentice Hall; 2 edition.
Notzke, C. 1999, Indigenous tourism development in the arctic. Annals of Tourism Research. vol. 25, iss.1, pp. 55-76.
Powers T., Barrows C.W. 2002, Introduction to the Hospitality Industry. Wiley, 5 edition.
Turner, Ch. 2003 Adventure Tour Guides: Life on Extreme Outdoor Adventures. Rosen Publishing Group; 1st ed edition.
White, R. 2004, From Wilderness to Hybrid Landscapes: The Cultural Turn in Environmental History. The Historian, vol. 66: p. 557.
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