Features of Meeting Consumer Needs of Tourist Services and Products

Abstract

This paper explores the characteristics of targeted offers of meeting consumer demand on the market of tourist services and products in conditions of the increasing importance of consumer-oriented approach as a response to intensified competition and differentiated tourist demand. Although there are numerous studies focusing on the topics of tourism development and service quality, no one has ever attempted to assess tourist products by integrating the views from both the tourist and the service provider perspectives. Previous works are typically concerned with one directed utility assessment and do not account for the consumptive and productive interdependency in tourism operation. The methods of economic analysis, systemic and comparative analysis, and scientific abstraction are used to investigate the consumer properties of tourist products and services. The analysis demarcating factors that organize value for the consumer and types of tourist services and tourist products on the separate spaces of their forming and being realized enables systematization of the mostly fundamental features of value (service quality, totality, reliability, variability, emotional impressions, availability). The results hence confirm that exchange value or value for a tourist products formed from an interconnected web of economic and socio psychological factors and one-sided assessment of consumption experience will not be sufficient. Therefore, a dual approach regarding both customer and service provider works provides a realistic assessment frame. Our results show that in circumstances where services are not possible to be observed before purchase and where the quality of the service is difficult to assess, factors such as trust, brand reputation, and emotional perception are determinants for consumer choice. The findings of the study suggest a two-sided consumer evaluation model that contributes to better product design, increased customer satisfaction and enhanced competitiveness of tourism enterprises. This implies tourism stakeholders should incorporate consumer attributes within an item development and marketing feature.