Examining the efficacy of self-classification approach in segmenting special-interest tourists: food tourism case

ABSTRACT

Self-classification is used as an a priori approach to tourist typology and market segmentation. However, skepticism still surrounds its ability to incorporate the multidimensionality of tourist behavior. This study seeks to empirically verify the efficacy of a single-item self-classification approach. The robustness of this self-classification measure is examined by comparing it to a data-driven multidimensional psychographic approach in terms of its ability to predict the behaviors of tourists toward food-related destination consumption. Results suggest that the single-item self-classification approach performs equally well as the psychographic approach in segmenting food-related consumption behaviors. The implications and limitations of this study are also discussed.

KEYWORDS:

• Self-classification
• market segmentation
• tourist typology
• psychographic segmentation
• food-related destination consumption
• food tourism

Acknowledgement

The work described in this paper was partially supported by the National Social Science Foundation of China (Grant No. 16CGL019).

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.