This study investigates how voice characteristics (i.e., speech rate, loudness, pitch) affect interpretation purchases in digital interpretation platforms through the lenses of signaling theory and nonverbal communication. Based on auditory and transactional data from a leading digital interpretation platform in China, this study uses voice mining techniques to extract voice characteristics and examine their effects on interpretation purchases. Findings demonstrate the significant positive effects of speech rate and the significant inverted U-effects of loudness and pitch on interpretation purchases. This study thus extends tourism interpretation research focused on traditional forms to digital interpretation platforms and provides empirical evidence that nonverbal signals (voice characteristics) matter in tourism interpretation purchases. Findings also offer practical implications for tourism interpretation innovation and platform operation.
29 October 2018 in Journal of Travel & Tourism Marketing
Tourism slogan is an important part of destination branding and marketing. This study uncovers the mechanism of tourism slogans on travel intention based on USP theory. Study 1 utilizes a content analysis to quantify China’s 5A-class tourist resorts’ slogans by applying USP (Unique Selling Proposition) criteria. Study 2 tests a moderated mediation model to explain the mechanism of tourism slogans’ effectiveness measured by these USP levels. Results show that slogans’ USP levels have a significant positive effect on travel intention through mental imagery, and this relation is moderated by fantasy proneness. Findings provide useful insights for practice and future research.
Economic globalization, the primary mechanism of globalization, has driven the flourishing of international tourism. However, little research has empirically revealed how it affects international tourism from a structural perspective. Based on network theory, this study applies network analysis and fixed-effects panel data estimation techniques to examine the impact of economic globalization on the structure of international tourism and the moderating role of uncertainty avoidance as an inertia factor in this relationship. The statistics are derived from panel data for 47 countries from 1995 to 2018. The empirical results indicate that there is a positive relationship between economic globalization and countries’ network prominence in both outbound and inbound tourism, and the effects vary under different degrees of uncertainty avoidance. This study offers insights and practical implications for policymakers, tourism marketers, and transnational tourism corporations to formulate tourism recovery strategies against the de-globalization caused by the COVID-19 pandemic.
Compared to previous research studying movie advertising focusing on traditional advertising, this study introduce location-based ads (LBA), an important new media advertising, to raise limited coverage of traditional movie advertising. This study explores the role of LBA in generating ticket sales dynamically and compares it with that of pop-up window ads (PWA). Using daily aggregate cinema sales data on about three million consumers, developed time-series models reveal that (a) LBA can affect ticket sales in short and long terms, and its sales impact can last for 9 days across audience segments; (b) compared to low involvement audience segments, sales impact of LBA is 15 times larger for high involvement audience segment in long term; (c) ticket sales impact of LBA are cumulatively 3 times and 47 times stronger than those of PWA in low involvement audience segment and high involvement audience segment, respectively.