The John Kent Institute in Tourism at Bournemouth University fully funded PhD Studentship
The John Kent Institute in Tourism at Bournemouth University fully funded PhD Studentship
Empirical Estimation of Customer Loyalty in Tourism
Bournemouth University
First call for applications - closing date 30 April 2010
The John Kent Institute in Tourism was established in November 2009 through a gift made to the University by one of the world's leading tourism entrepreneurs, John Kent.
This new BU-based Institute will fund a considerable number of PhD studentships in tourism research, starting with eleven PhDs over the next four years.
Four studentships will be awarded in 2010 from eleven research areas. Candidates will be selected according to academic excellence (and language capability where applicable).
The RAE (Research Assessment Exercise) 2008 placed BU in the top ten for research amongst the 60 new universities.
Respected globally as a centre of excellence for tourism study and research; we boast the largest cohort of postgraduate tourism students in the UK.
BU is home to the International Centre for Tourism and Hospitality Research (ICTHR), one of the leading research centres of its kind in the world.
The new Institute will complement the work of this Centre.
The maintenance grant payable to students taking up a John Kent Institute in Tourism Studentship in the 2010-11 academic year will be £13,800 per annum for the duration of the award.
The following project is one of the 11 studentships you may apply for:
Empirical Estimation of Customer Loyalty in Tourism
A repeat visitation is the most measurable element of customer loyalty in tourism, and securing repeat visits to both destinations and hotels is important in sustaining the competitiveness of destinations.
This research aims to fully understand revisiting behaviour by using econometrics and other advanced quantitative techniques, and to provide an analysis of the factors that influence, and thereby impact on, customer intention to make a repeat visit.
The research will contribute to the theory and methodology development and applications to real-life problems. Applicants should have a good understanding of statistical and econometric techniques.
There are many factors that potentially influence a customer's decision on whether or not to make a repeat visit.
These include past experiences, perceived constraints, attitudes, satisfaction, experiential destination image and location.
Most studies from tourism literatures only focus on individual psychological variables (such as satisfaction), tend to simply compare first-time and repeat visitors, and rarely use advanced econometric techniques.
There are many advanced techniques such as information theory, neural networks, and decision tree modelling that cope well with this kind of problem, but these techniques have never be applied in the tourism context.
The results of this research can make a substantial contribution to hotel policy management and the broader context of destination management, and will contribute to the development of theory in relation to tourist decision making.
The project will include estimation of models based on existing secondary data as well as designing a questionnaire to use in a primary research study, using and analysing a variety of statistical and econometric techniques to derive results. This will involve field trips to obtain survey responses.
For informal enquiries, please contact Professor Adam Blake ablake@bournemouth.ac.uk or email: graduate school@bournemouth.ac.uk
Further details about the studentships and how to apply are available at: www.bournemouth.ac.uk/studentships
