IPEHCS   26259
INSTITUTO PATAGONICO DE ESTUDIOS DE HUMANIDADES Y CIENCIAS SOCIALES
Unidad Ejecutora - UE
congresos y reuniones científicas
Título:
Millennial tourists: Understanding Customer Journey and ICTs Habit of Use
Autor/es:
MARINA ZANFARDINI; F. ANDREA GUTAUSKAS
Lugar:
La Plata
Reunión:
Conferencia; 7th Conference of the International Association for Tourism Economics-IATE; 2019
Institución organizadora:
Universidad Nacional de La Plata
Resumen:
Millennial generation (or Generation Y) is composed of individuals born from 1982 to 2000 (Pendergast, 2010). There are approximately 1,300 million of worldwide millennials which represent 26% of the global population (OIJ, 2017). Its consolidation as the most numerous generation in the world brings with it a series of economic, social, cultural and political consequences. Their lifestyle and patterns of consumption are causing major changes in all aspects of society, which also specifically covers tourism.Millenials do most of their diary activities by the use of mobile devices to be online, and they love travelling and having good experiences in their trips (Ceballos, 2017). The understanding of their 'customer journey' (Lemon & Verhoef, 2016) when consuming tourism services and destinations is certainly important, especially due to the crucial role that the Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) have in their lives.The UNWTO (2014) defines the customer journey as a cycle of thoughts, decisions, and actions taken by the visitor before, during and after their visit to a destination. It includes several actions in the three phases as: customer intent, dream and plan (prepurchase phase), booking and buy (purchase phase), and experience, reflect, share and return (postpurchase phase) (Lemon & Verhoef, 2016). In this context, the aim of this research was to describe millenials' customer journey from Alto Valle de Río Negro y Neuquén. We applied an online survey during March to July of 2018 about tourism consumption to 303 residents of Neuquén, Cipolletti and General Roca aged from 18-35. Results show that millenials prioritize online comments of other travelers (eWOM) as well as references of relatives for searching information. When purchasing their trips they use providers? web sites (hotels, airlines, etc.) for booking and buying, followed by the online travel agencies (OTAs). Laptops are the most used devices during de pre-purchase and purchase phases, followed by the smartphones. However, some millenials that use smartphones when planning their trips sometimes don't finish the purchase process with them. Indeed, they do it on their laptop. On the other hand, the use of smartphones is a habit for millennials during post purchase phase. They automatically share their travel experiences mainly at Instagram and Facebook. Finally, and considering that half of the sample had a job, the price was a determining factor when purchasing phase. As they are initial workers with moderate incomes, travel financing resulted crucial.