Abstract
Potential travelers need to anticipate their vacation experiences when making their travel destination choices. Advertisements are used as external stimuli to support the process of consumption vision elaboration by evoking emotions and communicating specific experience dimensions. Using a generic experience economy framework, this paper differentiates between travel experiences with passive and active participation, as well as between those with immersion and absorption experiences. The findings show that the effects of advertisements on arousing travelers' visit interest and fulfilling their information needs depend on the specific type of envisioned travel experience. Travelers’ emotional response to advertisements has a partially mediating effect on their effectiveness. Suggestions are provided for marketing practitioners and effect modelers.
1. Introduction
Tourism is a service sector uniquely shaped by the consumption of experiences (Pine & Gilmore, 1999). The role of businesses in the tourism industry is to provide customers with memorable experiences (see Stamboulis & Skayannis, 2003; Wirtz, Kruger, Scollon, & Diener, 2003; Xu, Morgan, & Song, 2009). The shaping of tourists’ experiences is also key for companies’ market success, as this experience is a predictor of tourists’ future behavior (Manthiou, Lee, Tang, & Chiang, 2014). Experiences should thereby be provided at every touchpoint along the customer journey (Norton & Pine, 2013). A typical customer journey, particularly in the tourism industry, comprises both direct and indirect touchpoints (Stickdorn & Zehrer, 2009). Before a visit, promotional materials (e.g. website, brochure, tourist guide books, and word of mouth) provide indirect touchpoints. The increasing competition in the tourism business, which offers people multiple options, requires offers of tourism products and services to distinguish themselves (Park & Jang, 2013; Pine & Gilmore, 1999). Hence, the successful provision of pre-visit experiences through imagination-evoking advertising stimuli could be key in influencing visitors' decisions to choose a certain tourism destination (Walters, Sparks, & Herington, 2007).
