Sport Tourists' Loyalty: A Conceptual Model

Abstract

This research promotes an innovative qualitative methodology, the Zaltman Metaphor Elicitation Technique (ZMET), for sport and tourism research. ZMET has been applied mainly in marketing research (e.g., advertising) for major companies. This study adopts ZMET because of its sophisticated imaging techniques in eliciting both consumers' spoken and tacit thoughts and feelings (e.g., more valid, more reliable) in a way that traditional methods do not. Furthermore, the powerful data elicitation technology available through ZMET enhances not only the data collection process, but also the interpretation of that data and the study's trustworthiness (i.e., validity, reliability, and credibility). The study findings suggest a conceptual model that combines exchange theories with essential and necessary dispositional variables to explain sport tourists' loyalty development processes. The model contains four antecedents of loyalty with ‘exchange-relationships’ as the moderator and ‘trust’ as a precursor. The concept of social and resource exchanges reflecting the long-term nature of consumer consumption processes enables this model to capture the complex and dynamic relationships in the loyalty development processes. This model also rises to the marketing challenge of building long-term consumer relationships. Sport tourists' loyalty, therefore, might be strengthened or retained by maximizing trust and several or all of these antecedents through customer relationship building with social and resource exchanges.

Keywords:

• Antecedent
• Event sport tourist
• Exchange-relationships
• Loyalty
• Trust
• ZMET

Acknowledgement

The author wishes to extend her sincere appreciation to Dr Deborah Kerstetter, Associate Professor at the Pennsylvania State University, for her guidance, inspiration, and assistance in this research, and to Dr Jerry Olson, LLC and Earl P. Strong Executive Education Professor of Marketing at the Pennsylvania State University and Dr Gerald Zaltman, LLC, and the Joseph C. Wilson Professor of Business Administration at the Harvard Business School, for their guidance, assistance, and permission to use the patented Zaltman Metaphor Elicitation Technique (ZMET) and the proprietary software package for this academic research.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Po-Ju Chen

Po-Ju Chen is Assistant Professor at the Rosen College of Hospitality Management, University of Central Florida, 9907 Universal Boulevard, Orlando, Florida 32819-1450, USA. Email: [email protected]