| Summary: | 碩士 === 國立東華大學 === 觀光暨遊憩管理研究所 === 95 ===
Destination image is at the center of attention for its pivot role in the process of destination choice (Pike & Ryan, 2004). Among a considerable number of image studies in the past two decades, recent studies have paid more attention to investigate how destination image is formed through the accumulations of familiarity (Baloglu, 2001; Prentice, 2004). However, the potential analytical importance of familiarity is somewhat overlooked in tourism literature and in need of further research (Prentice, 2004). Therefore, this research attempts to verify familiarity as a viable market segmentation variable by investigating its relationships with destination image and visiting propensity.
A comprehensive research design was demonstrated in this study. Our respondents were clustered into different groups by their level familiarity with Taiwan, and test whether these clusters of respondents differ in the scores of destination image and visiting propensity. Furthermore, the construct of expertise was added in to validate the result cluster analysis, and previous outbound travel experience was also added in to verify respondents’ abilities to travel abroad. On the other hand, for better measures, the qualitative preliminary study was implemented to generate a more comprehensive sample of items. These considerable efforts give support of both reliability and validity in this study.
Finally, the result not only confirms the positive relationships between familiarity, imagery, and visiting propensity, but also legitimates familiarity as a viable market segmentation variable in that familiarity clusters were significantly different across most destination image and visiting propensity variables. This result can provide theoretical and practical implications for further investigation.
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