Section Do Consumers Perceive The Value Of The Dimension And Its Mechanism

Creating and delivering excellent value to customers is widely discussed in the practitioner literature and is often a part of organizations' mission statements and objectives. Despite this emphasis, many festival and special event organizations are committed to a single product concept and have a product-oriented approach, try to sell their event with little or no regard for what potential visitors need, want, and pay for. Little research has addressed the value construct itself and there is no well-accepted value measure, further more, the effect and its mechanism of inner dimensions of perceived value on satisfaction is still ambiguous, especially in the field of festival and special event research.The objective of this study was to (1) examine Chinese visitors' attitudes toward festivals and special events by utilizing a two-dimensional consumer attitude scale, the Hedonic/Utilitarian (HED/UT) Scale; (2)develop and test a formative measurement model and 30-item measure of attendees' perceived value by analyzing the antecedents and dimensions of perceived value; and (3)develop and test a two-factor model of the effect of value dimensions on customer satisfaction by dividing value dimensions into hygiene factors and motivators.On-site visitor interviews and random sampling surveys were conducted mainly in five cities located in eastern China, which were Shanghai, Hangzhou, Ningbo, Jiaxing and Shaoxing. The target population was the visitors to festivals and special events, including tourists and local visitors. 650 surveys of consumer attitude to festival and 1330 surveys of consumer perceived value were disseminated, respectively, which resulted in 509 and 867 usable questionnaires for analysis, 78.3% and 65.2% effective response rate, respectively. Exploratory factor analysis, confirmatory factor analysis, Structural Equation Modeling (SEM), and analysis of variance(ANOVA) were employed for the data analysis. Data analysis software tools were SPSS 15.0 and LISREL 8.70.Four conclusions of this study were obtained. (l)Findings suggested the Hedonic/Utilitarian (HED/UT) Scale had good reliability and validity and can be used successfully to measure Chinese attendees' attitudes toward festivals and special events, which was consitant with findings of previous studies using the HED/UT Scale to measure consumers' attitudes toward toursim products. It was believed that this bidimensional scale was likely to help researchers and festival and special event organizers to obtain a better understanding of why Chinese people attend festivals.(2)HEDAJT Scale measurement and SEM finding indicated that people attended festivals and special events for both hedonic and utilitarian reasons. However, their hedonic attitudes have a stronger impact on attending the festival and special events than their utilitarian attitude.(3)Qualitative study, exploratory and confirmatory factor analysis described the development of a 30-item measure, FESPERVAL, that could be used to assess festival and special event visitors' perceptions of the value of consumption experience. Value dimensions emerged that were termed convenience value, service value, perceived price, esthetic value, play value, and social value. Perceived price was found to have negative effect on perceived value, while other five value dimensions affected perceived value positively. Its was hoped that this scale had a variety of potential applications and could serve as a framework for further empirical research.(4)The SEM and one-way ANOVA finding revealed that festival visitors' satisfaction was a function of two types of value dimensions that could be termed hygiene or dissatisfier and motivator or satisfier attributes. Hygiene value attributes include convenience value and service value, while motivator value attributes include play value, esthetic value and social value. If hygiene value attributes is below a given threshold, then dissatisfaction will result, but they have little potential for creating satisfaction with an festival or special event. They are a necessary but not a sufficient condition for visitor satisfaction. Satisfaction only results from visitor perceive the motivator value attributes. Two types of implications were drawn. From a festival and special event management perspective, the importance of improving the value attributes and visitor satisfaction was confirmed. Hygiene value attributes must exist at festival events, while most investment of resources should be focused on creating and improving the distinctive motivator value attributes. From the research point of view, the systematic examination of causal relationships among the constructs facilitated a clearer understanding of the concept of perceived value. It was hoped that the results derived from the two-factor model would serve as the basis for the development of festival and special event marketing strategies.