A simplified approach for food traveller segmentation based on involvement

Abstract

ABSTRACT This study reveals a simple but effective method of segmenting food travellers (also called culinary travellers or food tourists) based on involvement. Respondents are asked a three-item battery measuring purchase involvement adapted from the Mittal & Lee's article “A causal model of consumer involvement”, published in the Journal of Economic Psychology. By adding up the scores, three segments of food travellers (high, medium, and low food travel involvement) can be identified. The three segments are significantly heterogeneous in attitudes toward food and drink, role of food and drink in destination choice, social influence on food and drink, and food and drink activities. For each attitude or behaviour, high food travel involvement travellers rate higher than medium-involvement travellers, who rate higher than low-involvement travellers. This research supports three-cluster segmentation of food tourists provided by Levitt et al.'s article “Food tourist segmentation: Attitude, behavioral intentions and travel planning behavior based on food involvement and motivation” published in the International Journal of Hospitality & Tourism Administration, while providing a new approach that can be simply implemented by researchers and destinations without complicated statistical analysis or long lists of questions.