Factors influencing theme park visitor brand-switching behaviour as based on visitor perception

Abstract

With the development of theme parks, which represent a multi-million-pound industry worldwide, research investigating the factors affecting theme park visitor brand-switching behaviour is an important method for improving theme park competitiveness. In the present work, models and research hypothesis are constructed based on visitor perception, and the survey data are collected and analysed to assess the hypothesis and to revise the conceptual model in this paper. The results indicate that there are seven factors influencing visitor brand-switching behaviour: ‘visitor variety-seeking', ‘visitor satisfaction', ‘switching cost', ‘perceived value', ‘competitor attraction', ‘theme park image' and ‘visitor involvement'. The perceived value and visitor satisfaction strongly influence brand-switching behaviour as intermediate variables. Visitor variety-seeking and competitor attraction are positively related to visitor brand switching behaviour, whereas the other five factors are negatively related to visitor brand-switching behaviour.

Keywords:

• theme park
• switching behaviour
• visitor perception
• brand
• factor

Acknowledgements

The authors are grateful with the anonymous reviewers whose suggestions helped to improve the paper. The preparation of this article was supported by the Humanities and Social Sciences Planning Fund of Chinese Ministry of Education (11YJAZH017) and by the Zhejiang Province philosophy social science planning subject (13NDJC041YB) and by the 2013 Qianjiang talent project C item (QJC1302013).