An alternative (conceptual) process approach to consumer decision makint

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.