Customer-to-customer interaction: Impact on cruise experience and overall vacation satisfaction

Customer-to-customer (c2c) relationship is one understudied area in the relationship marketing literature. Similarly, in the tourism literature, research about (tourists' social encounters mainly focuses on the tourist-local community and tourist-service personnel relations, while much less is known regarding the interaction and relationships between tourists themselves. The purpose of this study was to investigate social interaction between unacquainted cruise passengers and its impact on cruise experience and overall vacation satisfaction. A research strategy combining qualitative and quantitative methods was adopted, in which exploratory qualitative research preceded and informed the more confirmatory quantitative study in the later stage.;In the first exploratory study, interviews with Western and Chinese cruise customers indicated that Westerners appeared to have more intensive c2c interaction and embrace it more than Chinese customers. Therefore, U.S. cruise customers were identified as the target population for further study because c2c interaction appeared to be a more relevant part of Western travelers' cruise experiences, and U.S. customers accounted for the majority share of the worldwide cruise market. Using interview and virtual focus group discussion methods, the second study explored the significance of c2c interaction as part of the tourist experience from the perspectives of cruise vacationers and collected contextualized empirical data to develop measurement instrument for the ensuing quantitative research. The study revealed that interaction between fellow cruise passengers added instrumental as well as expressive values to cruise vacations, thereby suggesting that tourist activities require distinctive types of social interaction and the forging of new relationships.;A conceptual model was proposed based on literature review. Two aspects of c2c interaction---quantity and quality of interactions---were identified and proposed to have positive and direct effects on customers' cruise experience. They were also proposed to have indirect effect on customers' overall vacation satisfaction, mediated by cruise experience. An online questionnaire survey was conducted in March 2007, and a sample of 613 cases was collected from a U.S. online panel. Structural equation modeling was employed for data analysis. However, suppression effects occurred between the two aspects of c2c interaction, as well as between one of the cruise experience dimensions (Self-reflect) and the other experience dimensions (including Relaxation, Learning, Fitness, Family Relation, and People). Therefore, quantity of c2c interaction and Self-reflect were removed, and the model was re-estimated. The results confirmed that quality c2c interaction had direct positive impact on cruise experience and indirect positive impact on overall vacation satisfaction.;The study contributed to existing marketing literature in three areas. First, the impact of c2c interaction on customer experience and satisfaction calls for the construction of a relationship marketing model that incorporates c2c relations as one component. This means that desirable c2c relationship represents a further link that could enhance the overall relationship between the customers and the business. Second, the predictive power of customer experience on customer satisfaction calls for an evaluation of customer satisfaction with services (especially tourism) from an affective experiential perspective, in addition to the traditional attribute-based evaluation (e.g., service quality). Third, the study developed measures of c2c interaction and tourist experience within the context of cruise vacations and provided a foundation for future research. The findings suggested that facilitating favorable c2c interaction could be a differentiating marketing strategy for businesses. Service providers could actively cultivate communion between customers so that it becomes a channel for value creation and a recognizable component of the service experience.