How travel agency reputation creates recommendation behavior

Abstract

Purpose – The purpose of this study is to explore the effect of travel agency’s reputation on customer recommendation behavior by examining the mediating effects of customer-perceived functional and emotional value as well as the moderating effects of tour leader performance and customer flow experience in the travel agency sector. Design/methodology/approach – A statistical analysis of the collected questionnaires was computed based on the 463 usable responses from Taiwan tourists who joining the group package tours traveling to China. Structural equation modeling is the essential analysis methodology used to examine the hypothesized relationships among the variables. Findings – The analysis results confirm that reputation has positive effects on customers recommendation behaviors in which perceived functional and emotional value work as necessary mediating roles. Nevertheless, the effect of reputation through emotional value on customer recommendation behavior provides a much better explanation than through functional value in the model. In addition, regarding the variables of tour leader performance and customer flow experience in the model, only the tour leader performance is confirmed that moderates the relationships among reputation, perceived value, and customer recommendation behavior. According to the findings, managerial implications are discussed as well. Originality/value – This study develops a conceptual stimulus-organism-response (S-O-R) model that, reflecting the mediating role of perceived value and the moderating role of tour leader performance, indicates the effect of reputation on customer recommendation behavior.