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Consumer behavior in tourist destinations
Edited by Juergen Gnoth, Luisa Andreu and Metin Kozak
Introduction
Managing the tourist's expectations is extremely important, since expectations can significantly influence tourist choice processes as well as perceptions of experiences ([15] Gnoth, 1997). Firstly, the individual's favorable beliefs (or expectations) about a destination would help the tourist site to occupy a privileged position among the places evoked during the choice process. Secondly, expectations may affect perceptions of destination experiences, or more specifically, the tourist satisfaction process. In this sense, the function of expectations in tourist satisfaction can be potentially guided by two phenomena:
assimilation; and
contrast ([27] Oliver, 1997).
According to the assimilation theory ([33] Sherif and Hovland, 1961), tourists would tend to adjust the destination perception to their expectations in order to justify their beliefs or predictions, thus removing their psychological conflicts. In line with the contrast theory ([18] Hovland et al. , 1957), tourists would magnify their evaluative responses in the direction of the discrepancy between perception and expectations. In either of these two circumstances, expectations will influence tourists' satisfaction and value-creation. As a result, expectations management is a key element to the destination's success.
In this context, the objective of this study is to thoroughly explore the factors generating expectations of a tourist destination. In particular, the basis of this research is a theoretical framework based on predictive expectations. Predictive expectations, defined generally as the individual's beliefs about how a product or service is likely to perform at some moment in the future ([26] Oliver, 1987; [29] Prakash and Lounsbury, 1984), are the most used type of expectations in past research ([28] Park and Choi, 1998; [32] Santos and Boote, 2003). In addition, past research on service expectations helps to identify the factors generating tourist expectations. Past experience, external communication, word-of-mouth communication and image may be considered the main factors in expectation formation.
Theoretical framework and research hypotheses
Since service experiences integrate the reality of a tourist destination uncovering the determinants of service expectations allows us to establish the theoretical framework of this study ([37] Zeithaml et al. , 1993). Firstly, past experience can influence expectations ([12] Faché, 2000; [17] Hoffman and Bateson, 1997). In particular, individual beliefs about a future encounter depend on the...