Consumer Behavior in Tourism

In this course, we deal with a special context of consumer behaviour: consumer behaviour in an experiential setting. This context is closely related to a service context, where

• we lack tangible goods (experiences are intangible);
• purchases are often highly emotional and/ or associated with risk;
• consumers are highly involved in the purchase decision (sometimes even also highly engaged);
• the uno actu in services results in special consumption settings (co-production, pricing, and the like).

We shall discuss a number of general consumer behaviour models but also go in-depth with a number of different issues related to the topic of the course. We further discuss selected empirical results mostly with the scope of the country in which USI is in: Switzerland.

At the end of this course, the students are familiar with the following topics related to consumer behaviour in tourism:

• general models describing and explaining consumer behaviour
• specifics in tourism influencing the way we view consumer behaviour in tourism (mostly stemming from a service perspective)
• model specifics with regard to consumer behaviour in tourism
• selection of special topics in consumer behaviour in tourism

The marking (grades given) will be based on a 60’ written exam, closed book at the end of the course/ semester. Students are expected to prepare the lectures by scanning the 1st tier readings/ papers in such a way that they can participate in a discussion about the content of the papers. 2nd tier papers are for further reading.