Holiday Destination Choices of Individuals - Research Paper Example

Consumer Behaviour Executive Summary The decision making process is considered to constitute the set of complex mechanisms of an individual thinking, since a number of factors and line of action get involved in it, with varying results. It is defined as a sequence of cognitive operations that are performed deliberately, which incorporate environmental elements in a specific place and time. It is further considered as an interaction between a resulting problem that requires a solution and the person who is willing to provide for a solution within a defined environment (Grunert & Olson 1999, p.78). A considerable number of stages as stipulated by the five stage decision model have to be observed whenever a major decision is executed. An individual should first recognize the problem or need, search for any relevant information related to the arising need, evaluate the existing alternatives that lead to the satisfaction of need as expected, and lastly, make a decision on whether to purchase the product or not. Incase the consumer purchase the product, he or she is expected to react to the product satisfaction through post-purchase behavior. The entire process of decision making is influenced by personal and environmental factors. As a result, individuals may arrive at different decisions in regard to the information that they have, on whether they are of a particular gender, age and ethnicity, or if positive motivations have a key role to play in their lives. Basically, a decision matrix as a tool coupled with the compensatory decision model is used to aid in establishing the ideal vacation destination for the three respondents. The options with the highest weighted score are considered as the closest options to the ideal position of the respondents (Solomon 2009, p.12). The theories that explore decision making process are categorized into two approaches: normative and descriptive. The normative approach explains how a rational consumer behaves in decision making and with the aid of statistical model foresees the consequences of each alternative from the information available. The descriptive approach on the other hand looks at how exactly individuals make their choices and judgments through psychological processes and in effect of environmental characteristic. In this paper, a descriptive theory, that is, naturalistic theory is utilized. The theory looks at how people in the real world make their decision and the factors affecting their decision. The naturalistic theory attributes eight different factors to any major decision in an individual personal, professional, social or academic life. In addition, normative theories are utilized where calculation are used to aid in making ideal vacation destination decision (O'Dougherty 2007, p.56). Personal characteristics such as demographics and personality influences the decision making process. Though the world is striving to build a labor and social equal society, there is the need to analyze the effect of such factors on decisions. Introduction Background information Consumers of different products or services undergo a decision making process which is fivefold before making their purchase. The processes involve need or problem recognition, looking for relevant information, evaluation of available options, purchase and finally post purchase evaluation. The processes are essential for any individual involved in marketing decisions. The five stage process will signify the need for a marketer to consider the entire buying process and not only the purchase decision. If the marketer considers the purchase decision only, the business may not be in a position to influence customer product choice (Hoskisson & Ireland 2007 p.49). The model can be followed in entirety but in other cases some of the stages are skipped. Therefore, the model suits those decisions that require some deliberation and thought. The purchase decision process initiates with recognition of the need. The consumer first recognizes a problem or need either internally or externally. Internal need recognition include feeling hungry. While external need recognition is cause by a stimuli such as passing by a bakery and an attractive aroma is emanating. After need recognition, the consumer begins the process of information search if the need is not strong otherwise a purchase decision is made immediately. The information obtained from personal sources such as friends, family, neighbors among others; commercial sources like retailers, advertising, packaging, dealers, point-of-sale displays and sales people. The other sources include public sources such as television, newspaper, radio, specialist magazines and consumer organizations; experiential sources including product use, examination and handling. The third stage is the evaluation stage where the consumer considers the available brands, services and products options. The extent of evaluation is determined by the degree of involvement of the consumer. Involvement implies a level of personal importance and perceived relevance that go along with the choice. The product purchase can be highly involving or low involving. Those products with high involvement (product that involves high personal risk and expenditure) will receive extensive evaluation from the consumer. The last stage of decision making is post-purchase evaluation. Normally consumer through cognitive dissonance experience concerns of their purchase decisions. This is where a consumer may feel the other alternative was preferable; hence affect consumers next purchase decision (Rai & Bhushan 2004, p.122). The marketers should understand the buying process of the consumer with the view of providing the perfect information relating to the encouraging consequences of buying. In case of a post-purchase behaviour, the marketing team will have to convince the potential client that the brand will satisfactorily meet his or her demands. In addition, they should provide an encouragement to the customer that they have made the right decision after the purchase so as to limit cognitive dissonance. Aim The paper set out to examine the holiday destination choices of three individuals with the analysis of the personal characteristics of the consumer that lead to their vacation choices. Methodology The paper will first develop a list of six holiday destinations that are preferred by individuals in the world. The destinations are recognized in the world as vacation destinations. Each destination has a specific activity that is performed in the destination. Alongside the holiday destinations, the paper will also establish a list of five key characteristics that will form the basis of evaluating the different holiday destinations. Such characteristics will include budget, kid friendly, cultural experience, travel time and weather. The different characteristics will be evaluated based on the percentage weights that each characteristic earn in relation to their degree of importance. After developing the evaluative criteria and destination options, a decision matrix is designed where the three individuals are expected to rank each destination option against each individual characteristic (Unferth 2010, p.123). Later, a compensatory decision model will be used to ascertain the holiday destination options that individuals are likely to engage in based on the matrix. Finally, an analysis will be conducted on the different holiday destinations in accordance with the existing normative and descriptive theories of personal characteristics including demographics such as age, gender, family situation, income, ethnicity among others and personality including mood, low dogmatism, high product involvement, enjoyment of search and shopping among others (Bouyssou 2010, p.34). Results From the responses, decision making process consumes a lot of time and efforts. Individuals have to establish an intensive research on different holiday destinations in the world. First, a list of the leading holiday destinations is generated and thereafter a best suiting option is selected. Here is a list of the best holiday destinations that the three individuals can evaluate during holiday vacation decision making process. A trip to Disneyland Camping in the Redwoods Rock Point in Mexico Hiking in New Zealand Up-market holiday in Botswana Safari trip in Kenya After generating a list of preferred holiday destinations, a considerable number of major characteristics of the destination are required so as to make a good decision for an ideal vacation. For this case a five characteristic list is preferred for the individuals. Budget Kid friendly Cultural experience Travel time Weather Rating the evaluate criteria by the three respondents Characteristic Respondent 1 (%) Respondent 2 (%) Respondent 3 (%) Total Weigths (%) Budget 35 45 30 110 Kid friendly 25 20 25 70 Cultural experience 20 15 20 55 Travel Time 15 10 15 40 Weather 5 10 10 25 The weights used in the different characteristics indicate their level of importance. This implies that characteristic represented with higher weights is the most considered (Knapp 2008, p.60). Rating of each destination options based on the criteria by the respondents Options: Budget R1 R2 R3 Kid Friendly R1 R2 R3 Culture R1 R2 R3 Travel Time R1 R2 R3 Weather R1 R2 R3 Disneyland 5 4 5 10 8 6 5 4 3 10 9 7 5 4 3 Mexico 8 6 10 5 4 5 10 8 10 9 7 6 9 7 10 Redwoods 6 5 7 3 5 4 3 4 5 8 9 3 8 6 4 NewZealand 7 8 6 5 4 5 4 5 7 10 9 6 9 5 3 Botswana 5 3 5 7 8 6 5 4 5 5 6 3 4 3 5 Kenya 4 5 3 6 5 9 5 5 3 5 4 5 7 6 2 Decision matrix: The following are the decision matrix for the three respondents: Respondent 1 Key Characteristic: Options: Weights: (%) Budget Kid Friendly Culture Travel Weather Total (%) 35 25 20 15 5 100 Disneyland Raw 5 10 5 10 5 Wt. 175 250 100 150 25 700 Mexico Rock Point Raw 8 5 10 9 9 Wt. 280 125 200 135 45 785 Camping in Redwoods Raw 6 3 3 8 8 Wt. 210 75 60 120 40 505 Hiking in New Zealand Raw 7 5 4 10 9 Wt. 245 125 80 150 45 645 Up-market in Botswana Raw 5 7 5 5 4 Wt. 175 175 100 75 20 545 Safari Trip in Kenya Raw 4 6 5 5 7 Wt. 140 150 100 75 35 500 Respondent 2 Key Characteristic: Options: Weights: (%) Budget Kid Friendly Culture Travel Weather Total (%) 45 20 15 10 10 100 Disneyland Raw 4 8 4 9 4 Wt. 180 160 60 90 40 530 Mexico Rock Point Raw 6 4 8 7 7 Wt. 270 80 120 70 70 610 Camping in Redwoods Raw 5 5 4 9 6 Wt. 225 100 60 90 60 535 Hiking in New Zealand Raw 8 4 5 9 5 Wt. 360 80 75 90 50 655 Up-market in Botswana Raw 3 8 4 6 3 Wt. 135 160 60 60 30 445 Safari Trip in Kenya Raw 5 5 5 4 6 Wt. 225 100 75 40 60 500 Respondent 3 Key Characteristic: Options: Weights: (%) Budget Kid Friendly Culture Travel Weather Total (%) 30 25 20 15 10 100 Disneyland Raw 5 6 3 7 3 Wt. 150 150 60 105 30 495 Mexico Rock Point Raw 10 5 10 6 10 Wt. 300 125 200 90 100 815 Camping in Redwoods Raw 7 4 5 3 4 Wt. 210 100 100 45 40 495 Hiking in New Zealand Raw 6 5 7 6 3 Wt. 180 125 140 150 30 625 Up-market in Botswana Raw 5 6 5 3 5 Wt. 150 150 100 45 50 495 Safari Trip in Kenya Raw 3 9 3 5 2 Wt. 90 225 60 75 20 470 Analysis As the respondents make a recipe for their ideal holiday destinations, some of the characteristics are more of great significance that the others. Therefore, the respondent would respond to his or her priorities by ranking the characteristics according to the importance and giving a weight to each individually. The weights are assigned as a percentage and the total percentage of all the weights should add up to a hundred percent. In this survey, the existing characteristics are five hence, the average weight is 20% for each characteristic. The average weight of 20% gives the starting point for weighting the five major vacation characteristics. For this case, the characteristics with higher weights are of great importance in deciding the best holiday destination. For all the respondents budget constraint is the major determinant of visiting a particular vacation destination, and then followed by kid friendly, cultural experience, travel time and weather respectively. The weights form the basis of evaluation. For the destination option evaluation, a scale of 1 to 10 is used, where, 1 represent the option that least fit the characteristic and 10 representing the option that perfectly fit the characteristic. The score that is given to each option is used to calculate the weighted score. For instance, for budget, 5 represent the option that averagely fit the budget, 1-4 represents an option that is far below the budget but it can be done and 6-10 representing the option that is almost perfectly fitting the budget. The weighted score (Wt.) is calculated as the raw score (Raw) multiplied by the weight (Percent) of the main characteristic. The weighted score is indicated like (Wt.) as shown in the decision matrix. Each individual key characteristic has its weighted score against the destination options. The weighted score for each option are summed up and the totals indicated in the total column. The destination option with the highest total score is picked as the ideal choice for the respondent (Mayer 1992, p.67). For the survey, the vacation destination with the highest score for the three respondents is as follows; Rock Point in Mexico for Respondent 1 with a score of 785, Respondent 2 is Hiking in New Zealand with a score of 655 and for Respondent 3 it is Rock Point in Mexico with a score of 815. Personal characteristics Age The decision making process for the youths is affected by pressures from their social and emotional aspects as compared to adults and the elderly. The youths due to their lack of experience and knowledge in various decision areas tend to take into account the effect of other factors on their decisions and are unaware of complexities in decisions. Conversely, adults and the elderly keenly analyze the factors their decisions and evaluate the quality of such decisions after pursuing the appropriate strategies. Therefore adults have some sophisticated and varied ways of analyzing the factors that influence a decision. A generalized opinion maintains that working memory take a rain check with age, as a result the capacity of older people to keep an eye on a decision process is limited. However, Dror et al. (1998) maintains that the speed and quality of the decisions are not degraded by age, thus contradicting the generalized opinion (Gupta 2007, p.56). Gender Women seriously take into account the influence of aspects like doubts, uncertainty and dynamism in decision making. Women place great value for money and time, in that, they are greatly concerned with the consequences related to their decisions regardless of effect of the decision on them or other individuals. Women also take into account emotional aspects in decision making. In contrast, men put more emphasis on searching for information that are necessary to execute their decisions and to the establishment of decision goals and objectives. Men are highly motivated during decision making process and experience to a larger extent the pressures that result from work related aspects. In terms of self-regulation and cognition, both men and women cautiously process information, retrieve from their memories the pertinent decision related data, classify the data incase they are highly varied, logically think of the existing options, predict results, weigh up the consequences, look for solutions to problems resulting from the situation, and keep an eye on all the decision making stages (Mawby 2005, p.78). Mood Existing literature has confirmed that a person’s mood can greatly affect the decision that he or she is likely to make. The concept of mood congruency according to a journal of personality and social psychology, in judgments explore the circumstances where moods influence individual attributions, thoughts and expectations, and as a result the individual decisions are influenced. In addition, maintained that individuals in a pleasurable mood are to be expected to view the world via rose-colored glasses as compared to those individuals who are in a gloomy mood. Therefore, positive individual mood leads to decisions that are informed and satisfactory (Müller 2010, p.88). Dogmatism This refers to the ability of individuals to hold on to their beliefs. The individuals with low dogmatism can readjust first in their decision making compared to individuals with high dogmatism. For instance, parents that instill strong beliefs in their children result to their son or daughters having high dogmatism. This implies that they will hold to their decisions on the basis of beliefs. Conclusion The decision making is a time, money and effort consuming process with a lot of information, behavior and choices to be clearly understood. The major decisions that are made by individuals in real life have to follow a scientifically structured process that involves five major stages. However, some other decisions do not need to go through all the five stages depending on the strength of the need. Marketers should, therefore understand the consumer behavior in decision making so as to provide the necessary information needed in the evaluation stage (Pride & Morgan 2004, p.45). The decision matrix and compensatory decision model, basically, leads to an ideal situation that match with the options that the respondents could have selected without any calculations. The findings of the survey indicated that the respondents have almost the same weights of the different destination options (Macinnis & Hoye 2009, p.102). From the existing literature it is clear that personal characteristics especially demographics including sex and age differences define the way different sex and age individuals make their decisions. Women place great value for money and time, in that, they are greatly concerned with the consequences related to their decisions whereas Men are highly motivated during decision making process and experience to a larger extent the pressures that result from work related aspects (McFarland 2003, p.34). Personal aspects such as mood and dogmatism also influence decision making process. An individual’s mood can greatly affect the decision that he or she is likely to make. In addition, low dogmatism individuals are more likely to readjust their decisions. References Bouyssou, D 2010, Decision Making Process: Concepts and Methods, New York, John Wiley & Sons. Grunert, KG & Olson, JC 1999, Consumer behaviour and marketing strategy, New York, McGraw-Hill. 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