Segmentation in Tourism Market

It is certain that not all tourists have the same taste in terms of the location and the quality of services. As they could belong to different regions, they could be of different age groups and earn different income as well as have different tastes and preferences to live their lives in a particular manner. As put forward by Jaafar et al., (2011) the tourists have different choices when it comes to selecting the mode of travel, destination as well as the activities at the destination. The segmentation in tourism market is necessary because the tourism sector possibly is not able to satisfy the need of every individual. People in Australia tend to maintain a high profile of a life style due to their growing economy. However, the communities in Melbourne lead a busy work life and they are not familiar with the deals and packages provided by organizations in the tourism sector (Biggs, 2011). On the other side, tourism supports the regional economy, increases employment opportunities contribute to the City of Melbourne’s cultural vibrancy (Weiler, Moyle & McLennan, 2012). It does have a positive impact on the local residents and business.

Nevertheless, the sector is not able to gain the required economic benefits from the community due to lack of awareness of tourism among the people. Tourism Melbourne branch takes the responsibility for developing the tourism policy and strategy. The branch works with the sector and trade to develop Melbourne as destination of choice for tourism. However, due to lack of awareness, sector is not able to gain that long-term benefit. Therefore, holding a public tourism event at Melbourne’s community could create a strong awareness among the people. A public event containing the cultural traits and rituals would help to grab attention of people in the community. A three days long International Arts & Culture event in a festive manner should be held where people from different communities and cultural background would visit. By visiting the event, the people could learn about the deals and packages of tourism and the customer value associated with the packages. 

It has been identified that tourism is sector is one of the rapidly changing sectors. As put forward by Amelung and Nicholls (2014), the marketers in tourism management, compared to other management sector, must deal with a large field of complex, purpose requiring multiple plans of actions. Particular requirements of the service sectors are the outcome of its business peculiarities. Decision-making is another significant challenge faced by the management of the organizations in the tourism sector. Hence, Mahadevan (2014) mentioned that understanding consumer decision-making remains as the cornerstone of marketing strategy. Customer behavior in tourism is underpinned by the general assumption regarding how the decisions are made.  The techniques involved in consumer decision –making in tourism sector requires the use of models instead of a single definition to understand their complexity. Thus, due to such barriers in the external environment, the managements are often stuck with crucial managerial issues.

Lack of Awareness of Tourism in Melbourne’s Community

Although tourism is world’s largest industry, only 5% of overall market research turnover is in the travel sector, which implies relative underuse of research in the sector. In this context, Dredge and Jamal (2013) the intangible nature of tourism and absence of truly free market could be a barrier to market research. Nonetheless, Yap and Allen (2011) mentioned that the significant barriers to tourism market research are managerial attitude as well as lack of appreciation of how appropriately the study can lead to increased profitability. However, it is also observed that in the tourism sector, there is no lack of market research data but there is an uncontrolled development of multiple data sources. 

As put forward by Shiue and Matzarakis (2011) every tourist has different taste and preference and the organizations in the sector might not be capable of meeting their needs. This remains as the foundation of segmenting the overall tourism market. Based on the above-mentioned fact, the marketing force of a tourism business categorizes the tourists into different segments that categorize the similar and distinct member (Seetaram, 2012). In order to conduct the event at Melbourne’s community for increasing awareness among the people, the community is divided into the following categories:

Geographic- Geographic market segmentation is usually done considering the factors such as the place of origin of the tourist. Melbourne is a large city with the people of different cultural backgrounds. However, Reisinger (2013) mentioned that the people who are migrated from other nations are quite accustomed with the culture of the communities of Melbourne. In this context, Moutinho (2011) commented that thousands of Asians are staying in Australia for years and built their own community, which is again a business opportunity for tourism sector in Melbourne. 

As mentioned by Mahadevan (2014) demographic segmentation is usually done by focusing on tourist’ gender, age, marital status, ethnicity, income, education and family members. It is certain that Australia is economically developed and due to the economic stability in the nation, people tend to maintain a high profile in their life style. Moreover, the percentage of average education is 82% in Australia; thereby, a large percentage of the population is involved professional and they have a busy life (Abs.gov.au. 2017). So, such professionals in Melbourne have the tendency to go on vacation on a frequent basis to stay away from their busy-work life. On the other side, average full-time earnings of people in Australia is AUD$81,947 per annum including the over-time and bonus (Abs.gov.au. 2017). Certainly, people in Melbourne are financially capable of affording a trip on a frequent basis. Another significant fact is that almost 66% of the overall population in Australia fall under the age group of 15 to 64 years (Abs.gov.au. 2017). So, the tourism organizations can consider different sorts of packages for the consumers- such as they can develop a “friends package” for young college students, family package for the affluent families in Australia and other related packages.

Psychographic- As mentioned by Weiler, Moyle and McLennan (2012), due to the growing economy in Australia, lifestyle of people are developing in a rapid manner. In this context, Yap, and Allen (2011) also commented that each market environment is changing rapidly, as consumers’ tastes are changing. People in Australia tend to look for invention. Thus, to go with such dynamic environment, the organizations in the tourism sector needs to develop their service and packages based on the demands or expectation of the customers.

Table 1: SWOT analysis

(Source: Dredge & Jamal, 2013) 

Research designed is usually defined as a general plan regarding what things are supposed to be implemented or done to complete the research. Research design is divided into three different categories such as exploratory, explanatory and descriptive. However, the proposed study will focus on the descriptive design. Firstly, the research would focus on the existing issues of tourism sector of Melbourne. Based on the identification of the issues, three different tourism sectors will be critically analyzed and three of the sectors of will be chosen for the International Arts & Culture event to create awareness among the people of Melbourne’s community. By conducting a critical investigation of the region, threats and business opportunities related to tourism will be selected.  To conduct the investigation, the data will be collected by conducting an online focus group survey.  The survey includes a set of research questions and likewise, based on the primary data, the analysis will be done comparing the data with the findings found in the literature review.

Focus group is a group discussion, which will be implemented with the participation of 7 to 12 people to gain the experience and views regarding theme or issues associated with the proposed research’s context. In the present research, to conduct online Focus group asynchronous session will be used, which will include email, mailing lists and online forums. Hence, the participants could read other’s comments as well as give their own comment themselves at any time. In this online focus group method, the participants would not represent a true cross section of group unless the group was a population of internet users intended to take part in the online research.

Advantages of his method- This method helps to minimize the cost of conducting the research, it will be done online.  The method has the potential to reach a wide geographic scope. In addition, the method also provides access to hard reach respondents such as business travelers as well as the professionals who have limited time to take part (Groves et al., 2011). The method also provides for a convenient as well as comfortable way of taking part.

Challenges Faced by Tourism Management

Disadvantages: It is necessary to understand that data collection and through focus group as well as data analysis remains much more difficult in comparison with the interviews and questionnaire. On the other side, there is a much discussion about the privacy as well as anonymity on the internet (Gideon, 2012). Thus, in online focus group methods, the question of privacy and anonymity remains as the significant challenge.

The essence of survey method is usually explained as questioning individual on a context and then describing their responses (Callegaro, Manfreda & Vehovar, 2015). The purpose of online survey method is to describe aspects or characteristics of the population. One of the largely used survey technique, an online survey technique remains as the systematic collection of data from the target audience featured by the invitation of the respondents and the completion of the questionnaire. In order to conduct the online survey, a set of questionnaires will be developed focusing on the awareness of tourism. The questions will be distributed among the respondents through email. 

Ease of Data gathering- Through internet, a survey among more than a hundred respondents can be conducted faster through the internet. In addition, the survey questionnaire can be rapidly deployed as well as completed by the respondents.

Minimal costs: Conventional survey technique may require thousands of dollars to obtain the optimal results. On the contrary, Lord, Brevard and Budman (2011) mentioned that conducting an internet survey facilitates low-cost as well as fast data collection from the target population. The technique of email questionnaire as well as other online questionnaire proved to affordable compared to the face-to-face method.

With the online survey, the participants can respond the questionnaire by inputting their responses while being connected to the internet. Thereafter, the respondents are automatically stored in a survey database, which provides hassle-free dealing of data as well as smaller possibility of data errors.

This technique is not applicable for surveys that require respondents who do not have access to internet. Some instances might include the elderly people who live in the remote areas.

Survey Fraud: As put forward by, survey fraud might be one of the heaviest disadvantages of an online survey. In addition to this, there are some instances which show indicates that there are people, who take part in online survey for the sake of receiving the incentive and after they have completed the survey, they no longer want to contribute to the advancement of the research (Coutts & Jann, 2011). 

References and Bibliography 

Abs.gov.au. (2017).   Australian Bureau of Statistics, Australian Government. Retrieved 17 December 2017, from https://www.abs.gov.au

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Callegaro, M., Manfreda, K. L., & Vehovar, V. (2015). Web survey methodology. Sage.

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Gideon, L. (2012). Handbook of survey methodology for the social sciences. New York, NY: Springer.

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Jaafar, M., Abdul-Aziz, A. R., Maideen, S. A., & Mohd, S. Z. (2011). Entrepreneurship in the tourism industry: Issues in developing countries. International Journal of Hospitality Management, 30(4), 827-835.

Lord, S., Brevard, J., & Budman, S. (2011). Connecting to young adults: an online social network survey of beliefs and attitudes associated with prescription opioid misuse among college students. Substance use & misuse, 46(1), 66-76.

Mahadevan, R. (2014). Understanding senior self-drive tourism in Australia using a contingency behavior model. Journal of Travel Research, 53(2), 252-259.

Moutinho, L. (Ed.). (2011). Strategic management in tourism. Cabi.

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