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Received: 18/05/2017 Accepted: 10/10/2017
Abstract
Food souvenirs are tangible reminders of a travel destination and play an important role in the hospitality and tourism industry. However, little research has been devoted to the definition, attributes, and impact of food souvenirs on tourist attitudes, and post-purchase behavioural intentions, which consists of intention to repurchase, recommend, say something positive, and repurchase even if the price increased. In a response to the identified gap, this study inspects the dimensions of food souvenirs and assesses its impact on tourist satisfaction and behavioural intentions. This study applies exploratory factor analysis to identify the dimensions of food souvenirs and uses multiple regression to assess the association between these food souvenir dimensions and tourist satisfaction and post purchase intensions. The data was collected from 252 domestic tourists in Bandung, Indonesia. The factor analysis produced five dimensions of food souvenirs, including brand and packaging, uniqueness, food quality, authenticity, and taste/value. Among these dimensions; uniqueness, authenticity, taste/value are important determinants of satisfaction with food souvenir itself, but also with behavioural intentions. Further, this study reveals that satisfaction with food souvenir is a critical driver of tourist satisfaction with visiting the destination. These results offer an opportunity for retail businesses managers and destination organisation managers to develop strategy to satisfy tourists by providing unique and locally symbolic food souvenirs.
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Keywords: food, souvenir, satisfaction, tourist satisfaction, post-purchase behavioural intentions.
Introduction
Souvenirs play an important role for tourists and the tourism industry. First, souvenirs tend to arouse meaningful memories of the unique experience from visiting a destination (Lin & Mao, 2015). This memory enables tourists re-live the experiences they collected from travelling. Second, a souvenir has the potential to build a tourist's social value (pride, prestige, and social needs) through presenting the souvenir to their family and colleagues (Suhartanto, 2016). For these reasons, tourists often feel that their travel is incomplete without some souvenir shopping (Swanson & Timothy, 2012). Further, the satisfaction associated with souvenir shopping (and eventual giving) can influence tourists' behavioural intention to repurchase souvenirs (Suhartanto, 2016; Yuksel, 2004). Third, the billions of dollars generated from trade in souvenirs is very significant for the economy of the tourism destination (Yuksel, 2004). This importance of souvenirs...