Chinese Tourists’ Purchasing Behavior on Thai Snack as Souvenir

Abstract

The objectives were to explore: 1) Chinese tourists’ media exposure, attitude towards Marketing Communication (MarCom) and purchasing behavior regarding Thai snack as souvenir; 2) the differences between the demographic characteristics and Chinese tourists’ media exposure, attitude towards MarCom and purchasing behavior regarding Thai snack as souvenir; 3) the effects of Chinese tourists’ media exposure and attitude towards MarCom regarding their purchasing behavior towards Thai snack as souvenir; and 4) the effects of MarCom regarding Chinese tourists’ purchasing behavior towards Thai snack as souvenir. The subjects of this quantitative study comprised 400 Chinese tourists.

            The findings revealed the following: 1) The communication channel that exposed to most was those close to them. They used social media to search for information the most. They liked the Thainess, packages with the word ‘Thailand’ along with Chinese or English translations, convenient means of payment, reasonable prices, being able to buy the souvenirs at shopping centers, shopping assistants capable of speaking Chinese. Most of them preferred to pay for thesouvenirs through Alipay. 2) The demographic characteristics differed while the media exposure and attitude towards MarCom did not differ for the most part. Their purchasing behavior was the same. Since their ages differed, their media exposure behavior and overall media exposure differed. In addition, due to their different educational backgrounds, their media exposure differed. Females ranked attitude towards MarCom higher than the males, except for purchasing convenience. 3) Attitude towards MarCom played a more important role in buying the snack than media exposure. 4) The elements of MarCom influenced their purchasing behavior.