The development of a structural equation model in managing experience, value and customer satisfaction in international tourism business

Abstract

This research aimed 1) To study factors related to customer experience management, customer satisfaction and customer value in Thailand's outbound tour operators. 2) To develop a structural equation model of customer value for Thailand's outbound tour operators. to developing structural equation model of customer value for outbound tour operators in Thailand. This study was a mixed methods research based on qualitative and quantitative research to obtain a set of factors, including internal latent variables, external latent variables, and observed variables via analyzing theory, idea, related literature reviews and focus group from professors, manufacturer, and customers using products and services. After that was further used to develop the structural equation model obtained by a questionnaire that was used in this part by collecting data from customers using services in tourist business and standardized and authorized company were 400 samples. Data was a process to analyze to exhibit the characteristic of data distribution of variables using descriptive statistic, i.e. mean, standard deviation (S.D.) using table and description to explain and to analyze collected data from sample population which was personal data, satisfaction level of customer towards customer experience management, satisfaction, competitive level of outbound tourist business in Thailand. Moreover, analyzing the relationship between variables in structural equation model according to hypothesis, this research aimed to compare structural equation model (SEM) and multiple regression. The mentioned technique was useful for researcher to test the relationship between obtained variables.

Study results revealed that relationship of all 14 observed variables revealed that the relationship of 91 pairs of the variables differed from zero with a statistical significance level of 0.01. The correlation coefficients among the observed variables were positive and the size of relationship ranged from 0.412 to 0.754. That meant a moderate to quite high relationship showing that the correlation value between each pair of variable was not highly correlated as no value was higher than 0.80. It indicated that multicollinearity did not exit.The correlation coefficient between the observed variables using similar latent variables found that every pair of variables was correlated with a statistical significance level of 0.01. 6 pairs of the variables had the size of relationship at a moderate level and 24 pairs at rather high level. The variables that are correlated at the highest level were economic value (ECVL) and quality value (QUVL, r =0.754 and the variables that are correlated at the lowest level were social value (SOVL) and economic value (ECVL), r = 0.542. The relationship of every pair of variables was positive. The correlation coefficient between the observed variables using different latent variables found that 35 pairs of variables had a moderate level of relationship and 26 pairs of them had rather high level of relationship. The variables that are correlated at the highest level were process (PROC) and economic value (ECVL), r = 0.686. The variables that are correlated at the lowest level were people (PEOP) and social value (SOVL), r = 0.412. The statistics obtained from the analysis meet the standard criteria for congruence and can be conclude the results for developing the structural equation model of customer satisfaction in outbound tour operators in Thailand that customer experience management and customer value factors have positive direct effect on customer satisfaction and customer experience management factors and also positive indirect effect on customer satisfaction through customer value with statistical significance.