Study On The Effects Of Customer Participation On Post-Purchase Behaviors In Agritourism

Agritourism is an important way of rural revitalization in China,and customer participation is of great significance to the operation and development of agritourism.One of the keys to the success of agritourism is the design and delivering of participatory offerings.The influence of customer participation on post-purchase behaviors in agritourism is an important theoretical and practical issue concerned by the academic community.Therefore,taking customer participation and post-purchase behaviors in agritourism as research objectives,this dissertation aims to explore the characteristics and influence of customer participation in agritourism,and try to explain these characteristics and influence of customer participation in agritourism from the perspective of experience economy,meanwhile test the adaptability of relevant theories of experience economy and experience marketing with customer participation in agritourism in return,and apply as well as expand those theories.Therefore,the research is of important theoretical value and practical significance.This dissertation begins with refining and summarizing the characteristics of customer participation in agritourism,and divides customer participation in agritourism into a new set of dimensions,and then locates the key variables that may be related to customer participation in agritourism,including key consequences,anticidents,mediators and moderators.On this basis,relationships between customer participation and these key variables are analyzed,one by one,using theories of experience economy and experience marketing,post-purchase behavior,perceived value,planned behavior,hierarchy of needs and motivation,hypotheses are proposed,and models are established.Finally,with the questionnaire survey,factor analysis,structural equation model and hierarchical regression analysis,the data of relevant variables are collected,and the hypotheses in those models are tested.First of all,the dissertation refines and summarizes the characteristics of customer participation in agritourism,and elaborates them one by one.Through the literature analysis and actual investigation on agritourism farms,the author believes that the customer participation in agritourism is characterized by leisure,duality,fragmentation,experience and diversity.These characteristics of customer participation reflect the close relationship between agritourism and agriculture,and agritourism being the embodiment of experience economy,which provide important enlightenment for the research on customer participation in agritourism.Secondly,the dissertation discusses and analyzes the dimensions of customer participation,and makes a new division of them based on their characteristics,which reflects unique features of customer participation in agritourism,and enrichs the dimensions of customer participation.It is found that customer participation in agritourism has not only the traditional participation depth,but also the dimension of participation time.They are two primary dimensions of customer participation.In the participation depth,besides the information exchange,social interaction and responsible behavior in tradition,there is also a dimension of innovative behavior,and the four of them are secondary dimensions of participation depth.Moreover,participation time has no significant correlation with participation depth or any of its four secondary dimensions,which is a completely independent dimension.Thirdly,the dissertation investigates and analyzes the path and mechanism of customer participation influencing post-purchase behaviors,which deepens the understanding towards customer behaviors in agritourism.It is found that customer participation in agritourism can positively affect customer satisfaction,word-of-mouth and revisit intention.Each dimension of customer participation has a positive effect on at least one post-purchase behavior,in which information exchange and social interaction have the most extensive and significant impact on post-purchase behaviors,followed by innovative behavior and participation time,and responsible behavior has the least impact.In the effect of customer participation on post-purchase behaviors,customer perceived value plays a completely mediating role;and in the effect of customer participation on customer perceived value,variables such as the hierarchy of needs,participation motivation and impression play roles of moderators.In addition,in the relationship between customer participation and post-purchase behaviors,there are attribution issues caused by customer's self-serving bias,which makes the outcome negatively moderate the effect of customer participation on post-purchase behaviors.Yet in the meantime,this impact of the self-serving bias can be weakened by the completeness of participation process,and the continuity of participation process and results.Fourthly,the dissertation systematically collates and tests the antecedent factors that may affect customer participation in agritourism,which expands the understanding of the antecedents of customer participation.It is found that customer participation in agritourism is affected by two levels of antecedents in three types.One is the direct factors such as customer involvement,role stress and psychological empowerment,the other is underlying factors including internal personal characteristics of customers and external elements of marketing mix of enterprise,which may affect customer participation as well as its direct factors at the same time.Among them,psychological empowerment positively affects all dimensions of participation depth,which is the most important direct factor;and participation time is positively affected by customer involvement and role stress.Experience opportunity exerts positive impacts on all dimensions of customer participation,which is the most important underlying factor;and each of activity type,task difficulty,sensory stimulation,employee power and geographical distance also exerts significant impacts on different dimensions of customer participation.Meanwhile,direct factors are respectively under significant effects of several external underlying factors;and customer involvement and psychological empowerment even play mediating roles in the effects of some external underlying factors on customer participation.Finally,the dissertation puts forward relevant policy suggestions for agritourism farms to effectively manage customer participation,based on the research above.On the basis of strengthening the cognition and attention to customer participation,agritourism farms should guide and manage customer participation,by setting clear management objectives;selecting target market according to management objectives and the influence of internal basic factors on customer participation;guiding customer participation through the design and adjustment of external basic factors;and ensuring that customer participation exerts only positive impacts on post-purchase behaviors by manipulating the impression,completeness and continuity.The main innovations of this dissertation are: First,we summarized the characteristics of customer participation in agritourism and refined its dimensions.They can not only be taken as the evaluation index of participatory offerings in agritourism,but also reflect the uniqueness of customer participation in experience economy,thus expands and supplements the existing literature on the dimensions of customer participation with new ideas.Second,we explained the inconsistency in the relationship between customer participation and post-purchase behaviors in the existing research with self-serving bias.By facing up to the casual relationship between participation depth and the outcome of participation,this dissertation makes up for the shortcomings of the existing research,and is creative to a degree.Third,we systematically sorted out and investigated the factors that may affect customer participation in agritourism.Considering that the factors affecting customer participation vary across service scenarios,this dissertation systematically sorts out,analyzes and investigates potential factors in three types and two levels,which is innovative.