Is the salesperson persuasive enough? The role of the tourists' perceived time adequacy and processing fluency

Abstract

Communication style has been well-researched for over four decades. However, the communication style in the tourism context and the role of time conditions are unknown. This research attempted to identify the effective communication styles in souvenir purchases based on different tourists' subjective time perceptions. Three studies were conducted using text and video respectively for different scenarios. Results suggest that a social-oriented (vs. task-oriented) communication style has a more positive effect on tourists' perceived persuasive effect through processing fluency. Surprisingly, this effect only exists when the tourist's perceived time adequacy is low. This study contributes to the socioemotional selectivity theory by discovering the effect of time scarcity in short-term service, while validating the effect of communication style in different time conditions. To managers, it will not go wrong by using social-orientated communication. However, using task-orientated communication, a more economical way, will be equally effective when a tourist's shopping time is adequate.