ARTICLE IN PRESS

doi:10.1016/j.to

Tourism Management 28 (2007) 922–923

www.elsevier.com/locate/tourman

Book review

R. March, A.G. Woodside, Tourism behaviour: Travellers

decisions and actions, CABI Publishing, Wallingford, ISBN

0-85199-021-5, 2005 (vii+280pp. £55).

There is a need for some really good, readable texts ontourist behaviour that have relevance to academics,students, practitioners—and even tourists themselves.Generic texts on consumer behaviour leave too muchground for interpretation by the reader in order to beapplied with surety to the tourism context and touristbehaviour. Understandably, too, they tend not to use thenow quite considerable literature available on touristbehaviour in good tourism journals. A tourism centredtext such as Swarbrooke and Horner (1999) is a useful fastintroduction but skims the surface of research publicationsand lacks an over-arching measured synthesis. A compila-tion of existing academic articles such as Pizam andMansfield (2000) is good for the final year undergraduateand post graduate but is not comprehensive in scope andneeds to be more thoughtfully integrated. Indeed, althoughPearce (2005) promises otherwise, it is arguable that athought provoking synthesis of tourist behaviour has notbeen provided since Krippendorf (1989).

So it was with some real anticipation and enthusiasmthat this publication was approached for review. A clearlogic seemed to be in place—Part I was supposed to dealwith theory whilst Part II was supposed to uncover andreport how travellers’ intended behaviours matched anddiffered from their actual travel behaviour. In other words,in fact the words of the authors, Part II was to offer ‘nitty-gritty’ details—the sort of details that would shed light onthe academic theory.

However, Part I Chapters 1–3 are quick to disappoint.There is no real introduction that might offer some initialguidance on how chapters are linked—or any outline of theauthors’ rationale. Each chapter reads like a particularlydense academic journal article. This would be fine if thebook was billed as a collection of journal style articles andif there was a good attempt to offer some overall umbrellaview. But such is not the case. Furthermore the data inChapter 3, from Prince Edward Island (PEI), Canada, thatillustrates holistic case-based modelling of destinationchoice is from as long ago as 1993. The tourist behaviouranalysed, therefore, is already over a decade old. There isno acknowledgement that Chapter 3 has been published inits entirety elsewhere, although the authors are known intheir field. Publication at this juncture seems well past the

urman.2006.05.009

sell-by date. Tourist behaviour has moved on since the1990s, especially with regard to destination choice, withnew technological developments, widened tourist experi-ence and many other changed contingency influences. Withits emphasis on research method, the chapters that makeup Part 1 would be better located in a special edition of anacademic journal focussing on research methods or,otherwise, in a dedicated research methods text. Potentialreaders could then more readily identify them. Forexample, pp. 38–65 consists of a questionnaire on work/leisure/travel and some elements from the questionnairewould no doubt be interesting for some researchers. But todiscover the questionnaire in this text would require someconsiderable serendipity.With regard to Part II, Chapters 4–11, a brief outline at

the start of most of the chapters gives details on how eachrelates to the preceding or following chapters. But whilstPart I had at least drawn on three settings Part II is relatedin its entirety to PEI, Canada. The rationale for the choiceof this context is described. First, the authors were able tosample interview 2000 respondents travelling to andleaving the island by car ferry, the dominant mode oftravel, over the July–August peak travel period. As theauthors claimed, based on their strong adherence to thepower of numbers, this allayed problems of representativesample size. Second, the study was claimed as the firstexample in which a tourism and leisure setting was used toexamine planned and unplanned consumption. Such adouble rationale needs to be questioned. Even though oneaccepts the reliability and validity of the research methodsand the whole research design, the dated character of thedata and the now historic tourism context is of concern. Asnoted above the PEI data relates to 1993 and the major aimof the research was the investigation of the influence ofproduct information upon purchase behaviour. Productinformation was communicated through the VisitorInformation Guide—‘a 170 page glossy, soft-covered bookin magazine format’—84% (267,860) distributed throughsurface mail to customers and potential visitors and 16%distributed at PEI provincial information centres. Onedoubts whether even PEI still uses such a marketingapproach in 2006 and for sure there are very few ifany destinations worldwide that would follow such anapproach. So even if the study was the first of its kind inthe field one might question its current relevance and askhow far the study can be generalised in to a contemporarypost internet situation. Moreover, even if the study was

ARTICLE IN PRESSBook review / Tourism Management 28 (2007) 922–923 923

completely new one might ask how it could be replicatedgiven the often cited ‘distinct advantages’, both directand indirect, of the PEI setting (pp. 168–170) thatsurely makes generalisation from the (very) specific moredifficult.

In any case, given the preliminary observations on therelationship between planned and reported consumptionbehaviours in Chapter 8, the need for such further detailedmicro-study and consequent generalisation seems irrele-vant. The authors conclude the chapter thus:

y we can only concur with the findings of Young et al(1998:189):[I]ntentions appear to almost always provide biasedmeasures of purchase propensity, sometimes under-estimating actual purchasing and other times over-estimating actual purchasing.

In other words, after exhaustive research, a non-conclusion is reached that is of little benefit. Theobservations in Chapter 9, testing the hypothesis thatconsumers who use product information are likely to bothplan and engage in more consumption activities than thosewho do not use product information, are only slightly lessnebulous. In Chapter 10, too, some of the conclusionscould be guessed at with 99% chance of success. Forexample, the authors state that that ‘‘Respondents whoreside within a few hours driving distance of PEI are morelikely to travel on a small budget, have a clearer idea ofwhat they can expect from the visit, and spend less timeplanning than overseas visitors y’’ (p. 200), and theauthors also state that ‘‘one couple’’ and a ‘‘group offriends’’ have a greater capacity to alter their plans than anorganised tour. Whilst existing texts on tourist behaviour,with a broader sweep, fail to come to a synthesis and justmanage to roughly stitch together one piece of researchafter another this work fails to reach a synthesis by overconcentration on the specific and the particular. One of the‘ambitions’ of the study was to offer strategic implicationsbased on ‘enriched understanding of consumers’ plans andeventual behaviours.’ (p. 160). But such implications,outlined in Chapter 11, stem from the introverted detail

of Chapters 8–10, a surfeit of statistical tests and a thoughtprocess that seems to spring more from overly academicdeliberation than from the richness of the field.In its defence, Chapter 11 is the most readable chapter

in the book and finally and (very briefly) acknowledgesthe problem of generalisation and, in an eight lineparagraph, the rise of web-based destination and productinformation. But to state that ‘The influence of the internetwould need to be incorporated into any future research y’does not deal with a central failing of the text that time hasmoved on.The book is aimed at a disparate group of ‘marketing

strategists, researchers, scholars and students seeking adeep understanding and rich description of consumers’thoughts and actions regarding their leisure and travelbehaviour.’ But one wonders how many readers wouldpersevere with the text from start to finish or even decide todip in and out at interesting looking points. Even if theydid persevere it is difficult to see exactly what benefits theywould accrue that could not be gained from reflection onpersonal experience of tourism (as a worker or tourist)allied alongside general texts on consumer behaviour andthe existing flawed but less narrow texts on touristbehaviour that are already on the shelves.

References

Krippendorf, J. (1989). The holiday makers. Oxford: Butterworth

Heinemann.

Pearce, P. L. (2005). Tourist behaviour: Themes and conceptual schemes.

Clevedon: Channel View Publications.

Pizam, A., & Mansfield, Y. (Eds.). (2000). Consumer behavior in travel and

tourism. Binghampton: Haworth Hospitality Press.

Swarbrooke, J., & Horner, S. (1999). Consumer behaviour in tourism.

Oxford: Butterworth Heinemann.

David BowenDepartment of Hospitality, Leisure and

Tourism Management, Business School, Wheatley Campus,

Oxford Brookes University, Oxford, OX3 0BP, UK

E-mail address: dbowen@brookes.ac.uk.