Christian Laesser
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Laesser
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Christian
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christian.laesser@unisg.ch
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+41 71 224 25 25
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Publication

The 2016 St. Gallen Consensus on Advances in Destination Management

2018-06 , Reinhold, Stephan , Laesser, Christian , Beritelli, Pietro

This article communicates the main insights of the third Biennial Forum on Advances in Destination Management (ADM), held in Vail, Colorado (USA). The substance of scholars’ and practitioners’ discussions can be divided into five topical domains: (1) relevance of experiences to the destination concept, (2) destination strategy and resilience, (3) the future of DMOs, (4) tourism taxation and regulation, and (5) big data and visitor management. For each domain, a goal-centered research agenda is offered, built on conference participants’ collective sense-making efforts during the three-day conference, followed by a dedicated consensus session.

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Consumers' Emotions about Getting a Discount and their Likelihood to Return at Regular Prices

2013-06-04 , Engeler, Isabelle , Laesser, Christian

Discounts are an important strategic tool for service marketers to attract new customers or to entice them to use their service during off-peak times. To establish long-term relationships it is crucial for firms to understand when and why these customers are willing to return at regular prices. Using a discrete emotions approach, we propose that this depends on the specific positive emotion elicited by this price situation. The results of a field study with 803 customers indicate that the distinct agency attributions associated with getting a discount trigger different emotions (pride, gratitude, relief, surprise) that distinctively affect post-purchase intentions.

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Emotional Effects of Purchase Price-Reference Price Divergence

2012-10-05 , Engeler, Isabelle , Laesser, Christian

This research investigates consumers' discrete emotional responses to discrepancies between the actual price paid versus their maximum willingness to pay or the price they expected to pay. We report evidence that divergence from these different reference prices trigger specific emotions, which in turn distinctively affect consumers' behavioral intentions

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Service quality performance : A study on service quality performance of private SMEs in tourism

2012-02-07 , Zehrer, Anita , Laesser, Christian , Lade, Clare , Melsen, Lisa

Tourism is a service-intensive industry that is dependent on the quality of customers' service experiences and their consequent assessment of satisfaction or dissatisfaction with a service experience. The management and performance of service quality is thus of crucial importance to the tourism industry. The paper reports a mystery guest study on the service quality of email inquiries by potential guests in a valley in the Tirol, Austria. The objective of the study is to identify good and bad quality performance factors of tourism SMEs when it comes to email conversation, which has been and still is the first contact with a holiday destination.

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An alternative (conceptual) process approach to consumer decision makint

2014-08-25 , Laesser, Christian

Tourism service providers are confronted with a number of challenging market developments, including (1) increasing fragmentation of markets - increasing granularity of groups of customers, (2) from one-to-one communication to community communication (easy multiplication of opinions and the like), (3) consumer as (invisible) bearer of information, (4) loss of control of communication content, just to name a few. Hence, they need ever better insights into how customers make decision and against which alternatives one is competing. In turn, there is a need for a more in-depth discussion of decision making processes, not just stimuli-response analyses. This paper proposes a process-focused model of tourist decision making and brings forward a possible conceptualization based on existing and validated models. Those approaches include MOA (motivation-opportunity-ability) theory, social network theory, economic utility theory. Based on this conceptualization, a number of possible research avenues are proposed.

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Challenges of innovation in alpine tourist destinations and the DMO as container for innovative processes

2012-10-25 , Beritelli, Pietro , Laesser, Christian

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Identifying casino patrons from the tourism market

2012-02-07 , Prentice, Catherine , Laesser, Christian , Lade, Clare , Melsen, Lisa

In order to provide market insight into diversification of casino visitors, this study intends to identify the travel pattern, travel motivation and demographic characteristics of tourists who include casinos in their travel itinerary, and to what extent, these variables affect their decision of visiting casinos during their vacation. Study subject and data base is the Swiss travel market, a notably mature market in terms of buying environment, buying power as well as sophistication of consumers. The results of the analysis reveal a number of significant differences between tourist gamblers and the 'average' travellers, including a number of socio-demographics, choice of destination, type of accommodation, travel motivation, travel information sources. No differences were identified with regard to gender and size of household.

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The intellectual structure of transportation management research : A review of the literature

2014-05-14 , Reinhold, Stephan , Laesser, Christian , Bazzi, Daniel

"Transportation Management" and "Management of Transportation" are keywords frequently featured on, yet hardly ever comprehensively defined or explained in peer-reviewed publications in the transportation research domain. In this study, we reveal and analyze the hitherto implicit intellectual structure of this advanced and diverse research field using bibliometrical methods. On the basis of a systematic review of 900 scholarly articles published between 1946 and 2012, we identify 55 topical clusters that delineate and weight the dominant associations with the term "Transportation Management" as either a specific or executive function at an operational, strategic, and normative level. Moreover, we identify two avenues for further research, which warrant future transport-specific research and that might potentially yield findings that generalize beyond this industry context.

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DMOs bridging structural holes in destination networks : A perspective based on actor's networks

2012-08-26 , Beritelli, Pietro , Laesser, Christian , Wittmer, Andreas

One of the main functions of Destination Management Organizations (DMO) in community-type of tourist destinations is to coordinate the supply network and therefore to serve as bridg-ing organization in a fragmented and complex system of organizations, institutions and stake-holder groups. Traditional research on the roles of DMOs, including the coordinating func-tion, builds on descriptive case studies and on the discussion of the cases at organizational/ destination level. We propose to change the perspective by analyzing the actor's level with the help of structural hole analysis of local elite networks. Thus, instead of describing the organi-zational role of coordination, we effectively measure the bridging value of the actors affiliated to the DMO in the network of the destination. The results of six selected destinations show that among the top four/ five bridging individuals in networks of between 13 to 42 actors, there are always not only the DMO directors but also at least one board member of the DMO. The paper concludes with further research in DMO board composition and evolution.

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Information Source or Information Channel? : An Approach towards a Classification

2012-08-26 , Riegler, Barbara , Laesser, Christian

Existing tourism literature which investigates tourist's information behaviour shows a plethora of used terminology concerning information material. Some researchers refer to the term information source, some to information channel and some use these terms as synonyms. To begin with, this paper provides a brief overview of definitions and concepts of information and communication theory. Consequently, a model of the flow of information has been elabo-rated. Moreover it attempts to deliver a classification of tourism related information media. Yet, with this paper the authors attempt to contribute to a better understanding of the terms information source and information channel. It should further provide a classification scheme of tourism related information carrier which should facilitate research results.

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