| Summary: | 碩士 === 佛光人文社會學院 === 管理學研究所 === 94 === Yilan County is highly dependent on tourism as an employment and revenue generator. There are lots of popular tourist destinations in Yilan, such as Jiaosi hot spring, Suao cold spring, National Center for Traditional Arts, etc. This study investigated relative images and positions of selected destinations in Yilan County as perceived by tourists. We utilized multidimensional scaling (MDS), a perceptual mapping technique, to identify key differences for each destination attraction.
MDS is a good tool for discovering properties important to subjects. The subjects’ perceptions are used to infer dimensions that are relevant to tourists in differentiating tourist destinations. The attributes we used to measure the image of Yilan tourism destinations. These attributes drew from research of Echtner & Ritchie (1993), and other researchers. The attributes were selected for the degree that they fit tourism in Yilan destinations. The nineteen attributes are “Beautiful scenery”, “Infrastructure quality”, “Activities/festivals”, “Not expensive”, “Healthy”, “Varity fun”, “Entertained”, “Exciting”, “Accessibility”, “Safety”, “Culture/customs experienced”, “Delicious food/cuisine”, “Friendly people”, “Stress released”, “Comfortable and relaxing atmosphere”, “Knowledge increased”, “Family oriented”, “Service quality”, “Good value for money”. The destinations stimuli contain Dongshan River Water Park, Luodong Night Market, Suao Cold Spring, and National Center for Traditional Arts, Nanfangao, Luodong Sports Park, Jiaosi Hot Spring, WuLaoKeng Scenic Park, and Honeymoon Bay. Data were collected from a sample of 170 subjects. The MDS procedure allowed for objective interpretation of data, resulting in marketing implications for redirecting destination image and modifying promotional campaigns.
From the results of the MDS, we found Jiaosi Hot Spring and Suao Cold Spring are destinations that relatively closed in subjects’ perception, the next cluster is Luodong Night Market and Nanfangao, and the third cluster is WuLaoKeng Scenic Park, Dongshan River Water Park, and Luodong Sports Park. The perceptions of these three tourism destination clusters are relatively closed in subject’s mind. In addition to this result, we extract five prominent benefit factors and used cluster analysis to categorize subjects into two segments.
The findings provide a practical means for destination marketers faced with the challenge of identifying the one or few features from their diverse and multi-attributed attraction range. Furthermore, the attraction could be developed to differentiate their destination in a meaningful way to tourists. Directions for future academic research and managerial implications are discussed.
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