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Procedia - Social and Behavioral Sciences 169 (2015) 312 – 317

The 6th Indonesia International Conference on Innovation, Entrepreneurship and Small Business,
12 – 14 August 2014

Understanding Consumer Decision-Making in Tourism Sector:

Conjoint Analysis
Shimaditya Nuraenia*, Arlavianyssa Pradiva Arrub, Santi Novanic
abc
School of Business and Management, Institut Teknologi Bandung, Jl. Ganesha.10, Bandung 40132, Indonesia

Abstract

Tourism has been key global economic activities and youth is said to be the mind share attainer in which they are the opinion
starter for many movements and trends. This study try to acknowledge the decision making of the youth, how they choose their
tourism destination site using conjoint analysis to evaluate their preference attribute. The result showed that the most youth
choose tourism destination with attributes such as international trip, friendly local people and has local specificity, and the
expense in this trip is focused to enjoy sightseeing
©
© 2015
2014Published by Elsevier
The Authors. Ltd. by
Published This is an open
Elsevier Ltd.access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license
(http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/).
Peer-review under responsibility of Center for Innovation, Entrepreneurship, and Leadership (CIEL), School of Business and
Peer-review under responsibility of Center for Innovation, Entrepreneurship, and Leadership (CIEL), School of Business and
Managements (SBM),Institut
Management (SBM), InstitutTeknologi
Teknologi Bandung
Bandung (ITB).
(ITB).

Keywords: decision-making; conjoint analysis; tourism

1. Introduction

Tourism industry nowadays has become the next blooming industry, which has essential value on creating job
opportunities, earning foreign exchange (Yang, Lin, Tsung-Liang, & Chang, 2010). Although some global financial
crisis (GFC) (Badr, Zakareya, & Saleh, 2009) and national security issues may challenges for the world tourism
growth, tourism and related activities form one of the largest economic sectors (UNWTO, 2003).

* Corresponding author.
E-mail address: [email protected]

1877-0428 © 2015 Published by Elsevier Ltd. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license
(http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/).
Peer-review under responsibility of Center for Innovation, Entrepreneurship, and Leadership (CIEL), School of Business and
Managements (SBM), Institut Teknologi Bandung (ITB).
doi:10.1016/j.sbspro.2015.01.315
 Shimaditya Nuraeni et al. / Procedia - Social and Behavioral Sciences 169 (2015) 312 – 317 313

Youth in Indonesia covers 35% of the whole Indonesia population. The youth subculture is said to be the mind
share attainer in which they are the opinion starter for many movements and trends –unlike older generations who
require a greater amount of effort– going ‘green’ for the youth subculure is something that is already integrated in
their everyday life.
Youth subculture is considered as “Low-Budget, High-Impact” because of they potential in influencing not only
teenagers and young adults, but older generations as well. This mind share that the youth subculture is attaining
within they own community also capture the mind share from many other communities. Its is not common for young
aduls to follow the trends of older generations, but it is quite common to see older generation’s efforts to keep
themselves look and feel young (Markplus, Inc, 2010).
Youth people began to see tourism as an interesting activity. With so many alternatives of destination, youth
people should decide the tourism destination. Seing youth people as customer towards tourism destination, how they
choose tourism spot which are interested? What makes them choose one destination over another?
The theories of consumer decision-making process assume that the consumer’s purchase decison process consist
of steps through which the buyer passes in purchasing a product or service. However, not every consumer passes
through all these stages when making a decision to purchase and in fact, some of the stages can be skipped
(heuristics decision). Some heuristics decision called elimination by aspect (EBA) –decision strategies which a
choice is reached through an iterted series of elimination where in each iteration, the decision maer selects an aspect
(attribute) and eliminates all alternatives lacking that attribute.
Therefore in this paper, we investigate customers’ decision –especially youth people, on their decision towards
tourism destination using conjoint analysis. Based on that observation, this research aims to understand more about
the preferences of the youth to choose a tourism destination site. For marketers, understanding youth subculture may
be an effective way to attain the market’s mind. The result of this study sugested to provide some inputs to develop
tourism in Indonesia.
Two points that will be highlighted from this paper, i.e what decision attributes that considered as the most
important for youth people based on their profile to choose the tourism destination, and what is the most preferable
combination of decision attributes of the tourism destination for the youth subculture.

2. Decision Making of Tourism Customer

The most fundamental decisions made by tourism customer –i.e. where to travel, whether to travel, what to do,
when to travel, how long to stay and how much to spend. While destination marketers have a strong interest in how
tourism customers make all of these decision, the most significant of these concerns where to travel; that is, the
choice of destination. A tourist may decide initially that they wish to visit a particular destination and then, having
made that decision, they may then set about deciding what type of experience they wish to create for themselves
during their visit.
An important role in choosing a destination is played by the mental image a tourist has about a particular area,
which takes into account the interests, the beliefs, and the attitudes of that person, but is influenced by the common
mental and public image of the destination (Obenour, W, Langfelder, J, & Groves, D, 2005).
According to Dan (1981), to choose a destination, tourists are pushed by their needs and wants, then are
influenced by destinations’ attributes to make a decision of where they will go on vacation. Therefore, destination
attributes are very important for a destination to be successful in attracting more tourists (Zhou, 2005)
Woodside and Lysonski (1989) developed a general model of the destination choice process which recognised
the central role of perceptions and preferences. Their model, illustrated in figure 1, suggests that the destination
chosen for a vacation is the outcome of a series of explicit and implicit decisions which progress from an initial state
of destination awareness conditions from which particular destination preferences arise and a travel intention is
formed.
314 Shimaditya Nuraeni et al. / Procedia - Social and Behavioral Sciences 169 (2015) 312 – 317

Traveller Variables
• Destination experience
Marketing Variables
• Income, age
• Product design
• Lifestyle, value system
• Pricing
• Promotion
• Channel Decision

Destination Awareness

Affective Associations Traveller Destination Preferences

Intentions to visit

Situational Variables

Choice

Fig. 1. Woodside and Lysonski’s General Model of Destination Choice

3. Methodology : Conjoint Analysis

3.1. Conjoint Analysis Basic Concept

Conjoint Analysis is a multivariate technique used specifically to understand how respondent develop preferences
for products or services. It is based on the simple premise that respondent evaluate the value of a product/ service/
idea (real or hypothetical) by combining the separate amounts of value provided by each attribute (Hair, et al.,
1999).
The term factor is used to describe a specific attribute or other characteristic of the product or service. The
possible values for each factors are called levels. In conjoint terms, a product or service is described by its level on
the set of factors characterizing it. When the researcher selects the factors and the level to describe a product or
service according to a specific plan, the combination is known as a treatment or stimulus.
Conjoint analysis was chosen to conduct this study because nowadays, it is impossible to remain cost competitive
and offer every feature desired by customer (Pullman, Moore, W.L, & Wardell, D.G, 2002). In conjoint
experiments, respondents express their preferences for products described by varying levels of attributes. By
observing how respondents evaluate products in response to changes in the underlying attribute levels, we can
estimate the impact (utility) each attribute level has upon overall product preference. Once we learn respondents’
preferences for the various attribute level, we can predict how buyers might respond to any potential combination of
levels in our study (Ome, 2002). Therefore, conjoint analysis is best suited for understanding how young people
these days choose their tourism destination in this study.

3.2. Data Collection

The sample for this study are the youth people, age from 17-29 year old. According to UNESCO, “Youth” is best
understood as a period of transition from the dependence of childhood to adulthood’s independence and awareness
of our interdependence as members of community. Youth is a more category than a fixed age-group. Therefore,
“youth” is often indicated as a person between the age where he/she may leave compulsory education, and the age at
which he/she finds his/her first employment. That is why the author chose the age range from 17-29 year old

3.3. Conceptual Model

This research conducted using the conjoint analysis, which in the preliminary research this study used literature
review and focus group discussion to check the attributes and levels that will be used. Then, for the main study, the
data collection collected by using questionnaire from sample survey.
 Shimaditya Nuraeni et al. / Procedia - Social and Behavioral Sciences 169 (2015) 312 – 317 315

Conjoint broadly refers to any decompositional method that estimates the structure of a consumer’s preferences,
given his/her overall evaluations of a set of alternatives that are pre-specified in terms of levels of different
attributes. It provides the researcher with insight into the composition of consumer preference (Tripathi, S.N &
Siddiqui, M.H, 2010).
Figure 2 is a conceptual model for this study, illustrating the step process to gain the conclusion of the
preferences from young travelers.

Fig 2. Conceptual Model

3.4. Data Preparation

First thing to do for using conjoint analysis is to define the proper attributes and levels for the study. An attribute
is a characteristic of a product (e.g. colour), made up of various levels or degrees of that characteristic (e.g. red,
yellow, blue) (Tripathi & Siddiqui, 2010). In this study, the attributes and its levels are how young traveler view a
destinations as a place that has something to offer. These attributes and levels are determined based on the literature
review and the result from focus group discussion with young people.

Table 1. Attributes and Levels

Attributes Level
Values for money • The expense in this trip is focused to enjoy the sightseeing.
(what travelers get • The expenses in this trip are focused to get a comfortable lodging and facility.
compared with the cost) • Comfortable lodging, facility, and also the sightseeing at a premium price

What traveler look for in • Entertainment

recreational site • Relaxation
• Beautiful scenery (nature)
• Local specificity
• Cultural Attraction
Comfort during the • Local people are welcome – warm and friendly
holiday • Good customer service
Distance from the origin • Domestic trip
place • International trip

Second step is to design the combination of attributes and levels. This combination need to be filled by the
respondents in the questionnaire to determine the which combination most preferred by the young travelers.

Table 2. Combination of Attributes and Levels

No. Category
A Domestic trip to a place that has a friendly local people and beautiful scenery. The expenses in this trip are focused to enjoy the
sightseeing.
B International trip to a place that has a good customer service and beautiful scenery. Tne expenses in this trip are focused to enjoy
the sightseeing.
C Domestic trip to a place that has a good customer service for relaxation. The expense in this trip is focused to get a comfortable
316 Shimaditya Nuraeni et al. / Procedia - Social and Behavioral Sciences 169 (2015) 312 – 317

No. Category
lodging and facility.
D Domestic trip to a place that has a good customer service for relaxation. Get a comfortable lodging, facility, and also the
sightseeing at premium price.
E International trip to a place that has friendly local people and has the local specificity. The expense in this trip is focused to enjoy
the sightseeing.
F International trip to a place that has a good customer service for entertainment. The expense in this trip is focused to get a
comfortable lodging and facility.
G International trip to a place that has a good customer service for entertainment. Get a comfortable lodging, facility, and also the
sightseeing at premium price.
H Domestic trip to a place that has friendly local people to see cultural attractions. The expense in this trip is focused to enjoy the
sightseeing.
I Domestic trip to a place that has a good customer service to see cultural attractions. The expense in this trip is focused to get a
comfortable lodging and facility.
J Domestic trip to a place that has a good customer service and beautiful scenery. Get a comfortable lodging, facility, and also the
sightseeing at premium price.

These combinations are presented to respondents, and then the respondents are asked to perform a very realistic
task-choosing among a set of category by ranking

4. Analysis

In this study, there are 45 respondents, 21 males (46,67%) and 24 females (53,33%). These respondents were
chosen by nonprobability judgmental sampling. Range of age for the respondents are 17-23 year old (20%) and 24-
29 year old (80%). Most of them are students (62,22%), the rest of them are workers (31,11%) and entrepreneur
(11,11%). Majority respondents (64,44%) earned between 1 to 5 million Rupiahs per month, , 15,56% earned
between 5 to 10 million Rupiahs per month, 11,11% earned more than 10 million Rupiahs per month, and 8,89%
earned less than 1 million Rupiahs per month.

4.1. Cross tabulations Test

Based on cross tabulations test, only income that has an affect to the preference of young people for abroad or
local trip.

X2 (df)=pearson value (chi square<significant rate)

X2(27)=43,405 (0,024<0,05)

4.2. Conjoint Test

Based on conjoint analysis result, the most important value for the young people to travel is what they are
looking for from the traveling itself (41,441), for example they are traveling to seek an entertainment, beautiful
scenery, cultural attraction, local specificity, or for relaxation, the result table from SPSS can be seen on Appendix 4
page viii. While the most preferred combination is the combination that has the biggest total utility compared to the
other combinations, which is Combination E (Table 3). The calculation from all combinations can be seen on
Appendix 4 page ix.
Utility itself is a subjective judgment or preference unique to each individual, is the most fundamental concept in
conjoint analysis and the conceptual basis for measuring value. Utility encompasses all features of the object,
assumed to be based on the value placed on each of the levels of the attributes, and it is expressed by a relationship
reflecting the manner in which the utility is formulated for any combination of attributes (Hair, J.F., Black, W.C,
Babin, B.J, & Anderson, R.E, 2010)
 Shimaditya Nuraeni et al. / Procedia - Social and Behavioral Sciences 169 (2015) 312 – 317 317

Table 3. Conjoint Results

The expense in this trip is focused to enjoy the sightseeing -1,102
Local specificity 4,68
Local people are welcome - warm and friendly 3,044
International trip 0,898
Constant 12,506
Total Utility 20,026

5. Conclusion

The result of this study is to answer the research questions, which are:
1. All the youth, regardless their gender, age, and occupation (whether they are still students, workers, or
entrepreneurs) only considering their income to choose their recreational destination, domestic trip or
international trip, and
2. For the most preferable combination for the youth, Combination E is the most preferable. They are prefer to go
on an international trip to a place that has a warm and friendly local people, spend their expense to enjoy the
sightseeing, to see local specificity.
We can see from this result that the youth are still prefer to go to other countries to see its local specificity. They
do not really care about the lodging and facilities, or even the customer service, but they prefer a place that has a
welcome – warm and friendly local people on that country.
Each area in Indonesia also has a unique specificity, and also well-known having a warm and friendly local
people, why the youth still prefer to go to other countries than to travel to see the uniqueness of their own country
can be the option for the further research from this study

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