A Research On The Tourist Power In Tourism Distribution Channel

The tourism industry in China has been developing continually and rapidly since the reform and opening up. However, many problems have also exposed in this industry process. The tourism quality problems have become the focus of media attention and hot topic on the Internet, in which you can see the indignation and helplessness of many tourists, especially during the Golden Week. Therefore, tourism researchers have been making great efforts to answer the question about how to settle the practical contradiction between the rapid-developing tourism industry and the vulnerable situation of tourists in the tourism distribution channel. The rapid development of information technology and the diversity of information providing platform have improved the accessibility to information for tourists, which provides advantages for changing the phenomenon of tourists’power absence and structural imbalance in the tourism distribution channel. Meanwhile, the emergence of new Internet-based tourism formats further improves the ability of tourists to influence other channels’ subjects, which provides new possibilities for settling a series of problems caused by the relatively vulnerable situation of tourists.Since the concept of channel power was defined based on the social exchange theory, political theory, social psychology theory et al, by Beier and Stern in1969, researchers continue to explore the power relationship between channel subjects and gradually focus on the influence by consumers in the terminal channel. It prompts the research of the tourists influence in channels from the new perspective, and eventually proposes the concept of Tourism Consumer Power (shortened to Tourist Power). Actually, not only the social power theory and channel power theory, but also consumer empowerment theory provides theoretical supports for this research. According to the customer dominant logic research paradigm, a complete theory frame for tourist power is constructed, including concept, model, measurement scale, category et al. Tourist power is deconstruct to six sub-powers and two influencing factors. And Tourists are classified by their power exercising preference as four typical categories:Legal-Reliance, Word-of-Mouth Spread, Self-Reliance, and Passive Power Reliance. This thesis also analyzes the result of exercising power by tourists and discusses the main approaches of tourism consumer empowerment.There are eight chapters in this thesis. The first chapter introduces the research background, identifies the purpose, summarizes the research contents and technological route, exposits the theoretical and realistic meanings of this research, puts forward the main innovative points and presents the whole structure of the research. The second chapter made a systematic review of the relevant researches, including the paradigm shift of marketing research, research progress of tourism distribution channel and the development of power studies, which establishes the direction and theoretical basis for the thesis. Based on theoretical analysis and deductive inference, the third chapter proposes the concept and the constitution of tourist power. In order to make up for the defects of theoretical deduction, the fourth chapter uses qualitative research method to explore the model of tourist power (based on the surveying materials). The fifth chapter develops the measurement scales by Delphi method, factor analysis et al. The sixth chapter presents a new classifying method of tourists according to the preference of sub-power using. Applying tourist power theory, the seventh chapter analyses the impact of changes of tourist power on the previous channel power structure, discusses the results of power exercising and how to increase the tourist power. The last chapter summarizes the main conclusions of the research, provides some suggestions for tourists, tourist enterprises and destination tourism managers, as well as points out the limitations of this study and finally proposes the future research directions.There are three main innovations of this thesis:First, based on the practical issues and phenomena, this thesis redefines the role, status and influence of the tourists in the tourism distribution channels, and proposed that the research should treat tourists as equal as providers and distributors, thus the tourists also have the channel power named as tourist power. This study proposes a concept of Tourist Power and constructs tourist power model to solve the problem of how scientifically and validly to study the impact of tourists as the terminal consumers on the tourism distribution channels and their members, as well as finds and explains the new phenomena in the tourism industry. Second, since the existing channel power measurement scales are mainly applied to the measurement of corporate power, which are difficult to directly apply to the measurement of tourist power, a new measurement scale is developed for measuring tourist power with good reliability and validity, providing a new measure tool for researching on the impact of tourists in the tourism distribution channels. Third, as the previous research on tourism distribution channels focused on the analysis of the "suppliers-middlemen" dual structure, this thesis expands the research scope to the end of the channel which includes the tourists, forming a more complete "supplier-middlemen-tourists" tripartite structure. As a result, the channel theory is extended and a new research direction of tourism distribution channels is presented. This not only has significant meaning for enriching the existing power research but also has important value for deepening the research in channel research field.