Browsing by Subject "Festival"
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Item A conceptual model of the roles of price, quality, and intermediary constructs in determining behavioral intention to visit a festival(Texas A&M University, 2006-08-16) Lee, So YonA clear understanding of the relationship among three performance indicators (perceived service quality, perceived service value, and satisfaction) would inform tourism businesses and organizations which of these evaluation measures were the most useful indicators of visitors?? behavioral intentions. Perceived service quality is a user??s judgment about a service??s overall excellence or superiority (Berry, Parasuraman and Zeithaml 1988). Perceived service value has been recognized in the past decade as one of the most salient determinants of purchase intention and repeat visitation (Bolton and Drew 1991; Chang and Wildt 1994; Jayanti and Ghosh 1996). Previous studies (Grewal, Monroe and Krishnan 1998; Jayanti and Ghosh 1996; Oh 1999; Sweeney, Soutar and Johnson 1997; Zeithaml 1988) suggested that perceived service value which is defined as a trade-off between visitors?? perceptions of the ??give?? and ??get?? components of a service (Zeithaml 1988) mediates the influence of perceived price and perceived service quality. Satisfaction is a visitor??s affective and evaluative response to the overall product or service experience (Oliver 1997). What visitors receive from their investment (money, time and other resources) on a tourism trip are psychological benefits. Thus, it is an experience that visitors receive from interacting with the tourism product, and satisfaction is an evaluation of the level to which these psychological benefits are received (Crompton and Love 1995). This study is an examination of the relationships between visitors?? perceived service quality, perceived service value, satisfaction and behavioral intentions. Respondents were visitors who attended the Cajun Catfish Festival in Conroe, Texas and were systematically selected. Findings revealed that: a) a structural model operationalizing perceived service quality as a set of attributes fit the data better than an alternative model that measured quality by using a visitor??s judgment about a service??s overall excellence or superiority; b) among the constructs analyzed perceived service value appeared to be the best predictor of behavioral intentions; and c) of the four dimensions of service quality of a festival, generic features and comfort amenities had the most influence on determining perceived service quality.Item Motivations for visiting flea and craft markets in rural areas of Texas(Texas Tech University, 2005-08) Pavlyshyna, Nellie; Dodd, Timothy H.Shopping, which is traditionally viewed as an urban tourism attraction, can be a central attraction for visiting rural areas. There is a significant growth of small caliber local events that promote shopping as their primary attraction in Texas. Such events are primarily commercial venues with the main attraction of shopping for antiques, crafts, and collectibles in the rural environment. Rural craft and flea markets are a popular form of attracting visitors to rural communities. The present research examines the role of craft and flea markets for the development of rural tourism, the place of this event among other special events, and the benefits of developing this type of event for local communities. It is concluded that rural flea and craft markets is a new product in rural tourism development. A definition of rural flea and craft markets is provided. The study also examines preferences and motivations of visitors to rural flea and craft markets. To analyze who are visitors of such markets, their motivations and preferences at events have become critical to developing sustainable tourism in rural areas of Texas. Old Mill Trade Days (OMTD) located in Post, Texas was used as a site study. A self-report questionnaire was administered to (N = 389) to OMTD visitors in summer 2003. The results of this study indicate that more than half of the visitors were over forty years of age, female, white, from Texas, and with annual household income of over $50,000. Crafts, antiques, art, and garage sales items were found to be the most popular items among visitors of OMTD. There were not found many significant differences in visitors’ preferences based on visitors’ gender and income. More significant differences were found in visitors’ motivations with regard their age, gender, frequency of visit, and distance traveled to the event. This research is one of the first attempts to examine rural flea and craft markets in the tourism context. Developing of the research instrument which is tailored specifically to this type of event is recommended in future research. The study was limited to visitors of Old Mill Trade Days who attend the event in summer 2003. The findings are generalizable to Old Mill Trade Days.Item Motivations for visiting flea and craft markets in rural areas of Texas(2005-08) Pavlyshyna, Nellie; Dodd, Timothy H.; Adams, CharlieShopping, which is traditionally viewed as an urban tourism attraction, can be a central attraction for visiting rural areas. There is a significant growth of small caliber local events that promote shopping as their primary attraction in Texas. Such events are primarily commercial venues with the main attraction of shopping for antiques, crafts, and collectibles in the rural environment. Rural craft and flea markets are a popular form of attracting visitors to rural communities. The present research examines the role of craft and flea markets for the development of rural tourism, the place of this event among other special events, and the benefits of developing this type of event for local communities. It is concluded that rural flea and craft markets is a new product in rural tourism development. A definition of rural flea and craft markets is provided. The study also examines preferences and motivations of visitors to rural flea and craft markets. To analyze who are visitors of such markets, their motivations and preferences at events have become critical to developing sustainable tourism in rural areas of Texas. Old Mill Trade Days (OMTD) located in Post, Texas was used as a site study. A self-report questionnaire was administered to (N = 389) to OMTD visitors in summer 2003. The results of this study indicate that more than half of the visitors were over forty years of age, female, white, from Texas, and with annual household income of over $50,000. Crafts, antiques, art, and garage sales items were found to be the most popular items among visitors of OMTD. There were not found many significant differences in visitors’ preferences based on visitors’ gender and income. More significant differences were found in visitors’ motivations with regard their age, gender, frequency of visit, and distance traveled to the event. This research is one of the first attempts to examine rural flea and craft markets in the tourism context. Developing of the research instrument which is tailored specifically to this type of event is recommended in future research. The study was limited to visitors of Old Mill Trade Days who attend the event in summer 2003. The findings are generalizable to Old Mill Trade Days.Item Serious leisure, participation and experience in tourism: authenticity and ritual in a renaissance festival(Texas A&M University, 2005-02-17) Kim, HyounggonThis study examined the Texas Renaissance Festival as perceived and experienced by (serious) visitors for whom this was a form of regular, repeated and highly meaningful participation. Specifically, the focus was to gain understanding of the notion of serious leisure as defined by Stebbins, in the context of festivals, and to understand the meanings associated with festival participation. Following a qualitative (constructivism paradigm) research frame, the data were collected through participant observation and 37 in-depth interviews for highly committed tourists to the Texas Renaissance Festival. The collected data were analyzed through Grounded Theory techniques specified by Glaser (1978). In regard to the characteristics of participation, the results indicated that their continuous participation in the Texas Renaissance Festival displays qualities of serious leisure: 1) identification; 2) long-term career; 3) unique ethos; 4) significant personal effort; 5) perseverance; and 6) durable personal benefits. As they become more seriously involved in the festival participation, they tend to be a part of a well-integrated subculture of which prominent values include personal freedom, hedonism, and anti-materialism. The experiences constructed through the serious festival participation were reminiscent of tourism existential authenticity specified by Wang (1999) as two levels: intrapersonal authenticity (gaining one?s true self) and interpersonal authenticity (gaining true human relationship). A search of such authentic experiences at the festival seems to be partly driven by the perceived alienation in everyday life. When these aspects were examined from an interpretive and meaning-based approach, attending the festival in a serious manner is not just a simple matter of escaping from the reality (e.g., alienation) of everyday life, but is an active quest for an ?alternative? to their lives at home as many indicated. Thus, the serious participation in a tourism activity such as the Texas Renaissance Festival could be best understood as a dynamic process of attaining existential state of Being in response to diverse sociocultural conditions. Several significant theoretical propositions were made based on the results derived from this study. Additionally, marketing and management implications associated with staging tourism events and festivals were discussed.