Tourism Management 24 (2003) 191202

The effect of uncertainty avoidance on information search, planning, and purchases of international travel vacations
R. Bruce Moneya,*, John C. Crottsb
b a International Business Program Area, Darla Moore School of Business, University of South Carolina, Columbia, SC 29208, USA Hospitality and Tourism Management, School of Business and Economics, College of Charleston, 66 George Street, Charleston, SC 29424-0001, USA

Received 3 March 2001; accepted 13 May 2002

Abstract Academics and marketers know relatively little about how national culture affects the way people plan and spend in the $448 billion international travel and tourism economy. From a matched sample of 1042 German and Japanese visitors to the US, this research explores the relationship between the cultural dimension of uncertainty (or risk) avoidance with information search, trip planning time horizons, travel party characteristics (e.g. size of group) and trip characteristics (e.g. length of stay). Results show that consumers from national cultures characterized by higher levels of uncertainty avoidance use information sources that are related to the channel (e.g., travel agent), instead of personal, destination marketing-related, or mass media sources; they also more frequently purchase prepackaged tours, travel in larger groups, and stay on average a shorter time and visit fewer number of destinations. Contrary to expectations, they do not spend more time making the decision to travel or making their airline reservations. Implications for future research and marketing practice (e.g., segmentation and standardization) are also discussed. r 2002 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.
Keywords: National culture; Information search; Travel and tourism

1. Introduction Where consumers search for and acquire information germane to their purchase decisions is a large and important research stream (cf. Moorthy, Ratchford, & Talukdar, 1997; Stigler, 1961; Urbany, 1986). The kind of search consumers undertake has signicant implications for the kind of purchases they eventually make. Despite the importance of the topic and the increasingly international nature of marketing, we know very little about how national culture inuences the search process (Webster, 1992). Do the cultural traits and practices of some buyers have a differential effect on their search behavior and, subsequently, their eventual plans and purchases? The answer to this question has important implications both for marketers who struggle with issues of segmentation and target marketing and for the ongoing debate between standardizing
*Corresponding author. Tel.: +1-803-777-0140; fax: +1-803-7773609. E-mail addresses: moneyb@sc.edu (R.B. Money), crottsj@cofc.edu (J.C. Crotts).

or segmenting the marketing function (Aaker & Joachimsthaler, 1999). The purpose of this study is to examine the inuence of culture on the process and outcome of external information search and certain purchase decisions subsequent to the search. The specic dimension of culture examined is Hofstedes (1980) uncertainty avoidance, a measure of intolerance for risk. We focus on this dimension because it has been shown to inuence information search behavior (Dawar, Parker, & Price, 1996) and its effects are well demonstrated in the studys substantive context, that of international tourism, one of the worlds largest economic sectors and by denition global in nature. From 1988 to 1997, global tourism expenditures more than doubled from $204:7 billion to $447:7 billion (World Tourism Organization, 1998). In 1998, Americans alone spent $72:3 billion on travel abroad and international visitors to the US purchased more than $91 billion of goods and services, contributing to an $18:7 billion trade surplus for the country. This spending supported over one million US jobs and generated over $9 billion in federal, state and local taxes. Currently, the US ranks third as the worlds most

0261-5177/02/$ - see front matter r 2002 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved. PII: S 0 2 6 1 - 5 1 7 7 ( 0 2 ) 0 0 0 5 7 - 2

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popular destination behind France and Spain (Tourism Industries, 1999). Given the importance of international tourists to corporate prots as well as nations balances of trade, it is not surprising that companies and nations alike compete ercely for their share of the market. A successful international marketing program is often dependent on the sophistication of its segmentation and target marketing strategies in various countries and cultures. Notwithstanding, Dimanche (1994) suggests that the lack of cross-national tourism research is not only due to a lack of resources, but often a misunderstanding of the value and benets of cross-cultural research as well as a degree of ethnocentrism and ignorance concerning cultural differences. This paper answers several calls for more international tourism research in responding to the questions addressed here (Dimanche, 1994; Pizam & Reichel, 1996). This paper is organized as follows. The theoretical domain of information search is explored, along with the theories of national culture. In the travel context, hypotheses and research propositions concerning information search and buyer behavior in the form of planning, travel and trip characteristics are then presented. The studys data collection, analysis, and results are then discussed, along with implications for academics and marketers.

of national culture is expected to inuence the type of external search, trip planning behavior, as well as certain travel party characteristics and trip characteristics. 2.1. Information search The concept of search dates back to Stiglers (1961) theory of the economics of information, i.e., consumers will continue expending resources for search until the utility gained from the search exceeds the cost. Since then, the consumer behavior literature has explored various concepts related to search and its implications for marketers. For example, buyer uncertainty affects both knowledge and choice search, in that buyers who are more certain about choice and less certain about knowledge tend to search less and respond less to changes in search costs and utility than buyers who are less certain (Urbany, 1986; Urbany, Dickson, & Wilkie, 1989). Search cost and utility have been modeled as antecedents to motivation to search, an addition to Stiglers model, along with perceived ability to search (Schmidt & Spreng, 1996). An inverted U-curve relationship has been found between the amount of external search and product knowledge (Johnson & Russo, 1984), as well as experience (Moorthy et al., 1997), in that the novice and expert alike search less than one who is moderately informed or experienced. Likewise, moderate levels of discrepancy (preconceived expectations vs. actual attributes) in new product categorization increase search more than very high or low levels (Ozanne, Brucks, & Grewal, 1992). Consumers search more when they are highly accountable for the decision (i.e., must justify it to others) and

2. Conceptual background and hypothesis development The conceptual model for the study is presented in Fig. 1. Basically, the uncertainty avoidance dimension

Fig. 1. Conceptual model.

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highly involved in the choice (Lee, Kerr, Kardes, & Kim, 1999; Laaksonen, 1994). Organizational buyers, however, who are accountable for their choice decisions, increase search behavior only in a symbolic or political sense (Doney & Armstrong, 1996)they only appear to increase their search because it looks good for the boss. Search behavior has been examined in a variety of contexts and domains, including the micro-detail of how visual display characteristics of advertising, for example, might affect search (Janiszewski, 1998), a topic of interest given the explosion of pictorally dependent Internet retailing formats. Interestingly, recent research suggests that, in searching for retailers on the Web, consumers are less likely to patronize retailers represented by display ads (vs. non-display), contrary to the positive effect that display ads have in print advertising (Hoque & Lohse, 1999). Indeed, the context of the Internet may lend a new perspective on search behavior theories, including the experiencesearch relationship (Klein, 1998). 2.2. External vs. internal search Consumer behavior research has identied two types of search that buyers engage in as they make purchase decisions (Engel, Blackwell, & Miniard, 1999; Hawkins, Best, & Coney, 1998). The rst is internal information search, which is basically retrieving decision-relevant information stored in long-term memory. The internal information may have been actively acquired at one time from previous experience and past information searches or passively through low-involvement learning where consumers are repeatedly exposed to marketing stimuli. The second type of search is external in nature, sources of information which previously have been organized into four basic categories: (1) personal (e.g., word-of-mouth advice from friends and relatives), (2) marketer-dominated (e.g., advertisements in print and electronic media), (3) neutral (e.g., third-party sources such as travel agents and travel guides), and (4) experiential sourcesdirect contacts with retailer (Beatty & Smith, 1987; Assael, 1987; Hawkins et al., 1998). Many consider the Internet (e.g., World Wide Web) as a fth uniquely interactive source of external information, while others would assign homepages to marketer-dominated or neutral sources depending upon their purpose or content. Classifying information provided by destination marketing organizations is also controversial (i.e. government tourist ofces, state and city travel ofces). Many would categorize them as neutral sources of information due to third party position as an intermediary serving the visitor. Still others would consider them to be a marketer-dominated source of information, since their reason for existence is to exclusively promote their destinations and members to visitor markets for the purpose of generating

overnight stays and visitor spending. For both the Internet and destination marketing organizations, the conceptual model of the current research uses the marketer-dominated classication. Different kinds of customers in various situations make different types of information searches. Businessto-business buyers, for example, rely more on external search than retail customers, because the latter deem the cost of information search to be higher than do industrial customers (Mazursky & Hirschman, 1987). Product category experts engage in more external search due to knowledge of important choice variables (Brucks, 1985). Even for very important decisions, such as health care providers for children (or adults) and nursing home selection for elderly relatives, consumers undertake relatively little external search (Dove, 1986). 2.3. Information search and the tourism industry Sources of information acquired through external search is the focus of this study, because it lends itself to more manifestation of the studys substantive domain, that is, how travel plans are made and purchased by individuals and groups (Crotts, 1999). Some of the general models of consumer behavior related to tourism include search behavior, but only tangentially (Robertson & Kassarjian, 1991). One exception is the work of Fodness and Murray (1998) that denes three dimensions of search strategy: (1) spatial, or where the search takes place (internal vs. external); (2) temporal, or when it takes place (prepurchase vs. ongoing during the trip); and (3) operational, that is, whether the information gathered is contributory (e.g., a travel guide useful, but insufcient to invoke the nal purchase decision) or decisive (e.g., prior experience with the destination is enough to convince someone to make a return visit). It has also been shown that travelers to a high degree use a combination of certain external sources, such as word-of-mouth advice and published travel guides (such as AAAs), for example (Fodness & Murray, 1999). The external search strategy of travelers, as with any other consumer group, varies with demographic and other characteristics of the traveler. Seniors, for example, are much less likely to engage in active external search than non-seniors and they tend to buy more prepackaged tours than non-seniors (Javalgi, Edward, & Rao, 1992). 2.4. National culture and search behavior We propose that national culture is another characteristic that may manifest itself in varying approaches to search and purchase decisions. International tourism, by its very nature, is one of the most global of all industries. The desire to get away, the possibility of visiting foreign destinations, requires the consumer to

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search for and plan a coordinated series of events requiring inputs from a variety of service sectors to make the trip possible. Without the desired information the consumer cannot buy, and without cogent communication the marketer cannot sell. Besides the important substantive issues in international tourism, there are also interesting theoretical reasons to study tourism search behavior in an international setting. National culture, one of the many layers of constructs germane to international marketing research (Cavusgil, 1998) has been used as a general theory (Clark, 1990) to explain differences in marketing management decision making (Tse, Lee, Vertinsky, & Wehrung, 1988), global brand image strategies (Roth, 1995), and the effectiveness of emotional appeals in advertising (Aaker & Williams, 1998). It has also been shown to inuence consumer innovativeness (Steenkamp, ter Hofstede, & Wedel, 1999), new product development activity (Nakata & Sivakumar, 1996), word-of-mouth behavior in industrial services (Money, Gilly, & Graham, 1998), and buyer behavior in tourism (Pizam & Reichel, 1996). National culture has been dened in hundreds of ways (Erez & Earley, 1993), but one of the most commonly accepted is Kluckhohns (1954, p. 86) description of patterned ways of thinking, feeling, and reacting, acquired and transmitted; ythe essential core of culture consists of traditional (i.e., historically derived and selected) ideas and especially their attached values. The most widely utilized dimensions of culture are the ve presented by Hofstede (1980) and his colleagues (Hofstede & Bond, 1988) from their instrument called the Values Survey Module or VSM. Briey, they are: power distance (a tolerance for class differentials in society), individualism (the degree to which welfare of the individualism is valued more than the group), masculinity (achievement orientation, competition, and materialism), uncertainty avoidance (intolerance of risk), and later, the confucian dynamic, or long-term orientation (stability, thrift, respect for tradition and the future). National culture and search have been only loosely explored together. Norwegian companies in Russia categorized as innovative were found to conduct more external search than non-innovative companies. Product country-of-origin (related to, but arguably different than culture) apparently does not affect search behavior in consumers (Chao & Gupta, 1995). Ethnicity, another related concept may affect search behavior. In one study, English-language Hispanics were inuenced more by print media sources than Spanish language Hispanics, who were inuenced more by radio, billboards, family, and co-workers (Webster, 1992). Collectivism, one of Hofstedes (1980) cultural traits, has been shown to be salient in consumer search behavior for environmentally friendly products (Ling-yee, 1997). Moreover, in one of the rare

cross-cultural tourism research studies, Chen (2000) evoked the collectivism/individualism construct in explaining the unique preferences for external information sources used by Japanese, South Korean and Australian visitors to the US. Specically, business travelers from highly collectivistic Japan and Korean societies relied heavily on tour companies, corporate travel ofces, travel guides and advice from friends and relatives; while business travelers from the individualistic Australian society preferred gaining their information directly from the airlines and US state/city travel ofces. However, the collectivism trait was less clear among leisure travelers. Japanese and Australian leisure visitors showed individualistic tendencies in their search strategies while Korean visitors evoked collectivistic information search behaviors. As noted by Chen, the collectivist framework may be too limited in identifying culture-specic search strategies in a broader cross-cultural context. The cultural perspective employed in this current study is Hofstedes uncertainty avoidance measure. This is because consumers engage in search behavior to minimize the ve types of risk in a purchase decision (Solomon, 1999): monetary (losing or wasting income), functional (does not meet the need), physical (personal illness or injury), social (unfashionable or lowers status), and psychological (damages self-esteem or engenders guilt). Indeed, of Hofstedes ve cultural dimensions, uncertainty avoidance (UAI) and power distance have been shown to inuence differences among cultures in external search behavior (Dawar et al., 1996). Of the two, UAI was deemed more appropriate to the substantive domain of travel purchases. Specically, high UAI cultures are not comfortable with unstructured situations. They prize structure; they feel threatened by the unknown and the ambiguous. On the other hand, medium UAI cultures willingly take more risk than high UAI cultures. Risk has been identied as a major concern for international travelers (Yavas, 1990). Furthermore, interpersonal word-of-mouth search has been shown to be used by consumers to decrease risk (Rosen & Olshavsky, 1987). This is consistent with research that has shown the Japanese rms (a high uncertainty avoidance culture) use more word-of-mouth search in sourcing their corporate travel services when compared to American rms (Money, 2000). One way to classify the external search available to travel consumers is whether or not the information is marketer-dominated, that is, information provided by hotels, airlines, resorts, and rental car companies, as well as destination marketing organizations (i.e., nation, state, city). This information is typically disseminated by mass media advertising. The other type of information source, not directly connected with the service delivery itself (such as a specic destination or hotel company) would be personal word-of-mouth from friends and relatives, a neutral third party such as AAA or a travel

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guide, or the travel service channel member such as a travel agent or tour operator. The key differentiation is the vested interest of the communicator in selling the services of a particular destination or rm. The marketer-dominated information would hold less credibility, and hence contain more risk. Thus, it is expected that higher risk avoidance consumers will gather information from one of the higher credibility (to them, at least) i.e., personal, neutral, or channel sources, rather than marketer-dominated sources. For example, the dominance of word-of-mouth inuence over other forms of advertising has been well documented (see Gilly, Graham, Wolnbarger, & Yale, 1998 for a review). This study hypothesizes that high UAI cultures will try to minimize their risk by using more nonmarketer dominated sources of information: H1: Consumers from a high uncertainty avoidance national culture will engage in more external search from sources that are non-marketer dominated, compared with consumers from a medium uncertainty avoidance culture, who will use more sources that are marketer dominated and mass media in nature.

2.5.2. Travel party characteristics Relatedly, the type and number of people accompanying a tourist would also be inuenced by national culture. That is, a less risky strategy would be to travel in large groups in established tours, as opposed to traveling alone. The inuence of social ties in group decision-making behavior is also relevant here (Brown & Reingen, 1987). Although traveling with people they do not know, they would share with the group common interests in the destination, and therefore would not be putting as much at risk, compared with traveling alone. We generally expect those consumers of high uncertainty avoidance to travel in larger groups than those of medium uncertainty avoidance, who will strike out on their own, so to speak. P2: The travel parties of consumers from high uncertainty avoidance cultures will be larger than the travel parties of medium uncertainty avoidance consumers, who will tend to travel alone.

2.5. Research propositions Subsequent to a consumers search, components of trip planning, travel party characteristics, and trip characteristics are also inuenced by national culture. However, since the usage situation theory related to these phenomena is less developed than that for search behavior, these relationships are presented as research propositions rather than formal hypotheses.

2.5.1. Trip planning The very nature of international travel requires the tourist to usually make the decision to go on the trip well in advance of departure. Other decisions, such as which airline and hotel(s) to utilize, must also be made and executed. This study proposes that individuals socialized in high risk-avoidance societies will tend to plan their trips longer in advance and make their reservations (specically, airline) earlier than consumers in medium uncertainty avoidance cultures. The higher levels of uncertainty avoidance that inuence the type of external search might also increase the lead time consumers take to make their plans. Tversky and Shar (1992) showed that buyers who have hard decisions to make will delay making those decisions. Risk avoiding people reasonably may be expected to prefer settling their travel arrangements sooner rather than later: P1: Consumers of a high uncertainty avoidance national culture will make their travel plans farther in advance, compared with medium uncertainty avoidance consumers.

2.5.3. Trip characteristics Lastly, it is expected that risk-averse consumers will purchase more prepackaged trips and spend less nights abroad visiting fewer destinations. In terms of delivery, there are three types of leisure travel services: fully prepacked (all inclusive price and arrangements for airfare, hotel, and so on), free and independent (the components for the trip are purchased by the consumer separately) and mix and match packages (e.g., includes airfare and rental car, but not lodging). Consumer behavior research has shown that in difcult, emotional decisions, buyers will often avoid making the decision altogether (Luce, Bettman, & Payne, 1997). In the case of tourism, that may mean buying a packaged tour, albeit one large, difcult decision, to avoid smaller but more numerous difcult decisions. Although a mistake in picking the wrong package might be costly, most tourists would probably agree that the less risky alternative is the fully prepackaged plan, with all of the arrangements tied together for the consumer. With regards to outbound Japanese and German tourist markets, these packages are usually put together by large, well-known rms such as Japan Travel Bureau and TUI, which is owned by Westdeutsche Landesbank. In regards to trip duration and the number of destinations visited, the effects of culture on consumers variety-seeking behavior appear to be salient (Colton & Money, 1998). It makes intuitive sense that a riskadverse traveler would like to get back to home base and not stay as many nights away. Even if the trip costs more, the more adventuresome risk takers, on the other hand, will tend to stay longer and visit more places while doing so. P3: Consumers of a medium uncertainty avoidance national culture will purchase fewer prepackaged trips,

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will stay longer in the US, and visit more destinations compared with high uncertainty avoidance consumers.

3.2. Matched sample characteristics The second phase in the sample selection process delimited the nal sample to those visitors who had not visited the US in the previous ve years, whose primary trip purposes were deemed discretionary (i.e., holidays, leisure, recreation and sightseeing; visiting friends and relatives), who were between the ages of 45 and 60 years, and who were employed in managerial or professional occupations. Hofstede (1991) suggested that comparisons of national cultures between countries should always be based upon a sample of people of similar socio-economic groupings. Controlling for the number of previous visits and trip purpose was also deemed appropriate since the trip planning characteristics can be quite different between these groups (Opermann, 1997; Guy, Curtis, & Crotts, 1990; Gitelson & Crompton, 1994). Delimiting the sample to those who indicated the main, their trip purpose was two of nine response categories on the survey instrument was an attempt to hold constant the inuence of trip motives on the dependent variables in question. The two response categories selected (i.e., holidays, leisure, recreation and sightseeing; visiting friends and relatives) are generally considered the principal travel motivation of overseas visitors to the US (You, OLeary, Morrison, & Hong, 2001; Cha, McCleary, & Uysal, 1995). The nal sample derived from this sample selection process was 1042 respondents, composed of 707 Japanese and 335 Germans. The ability to further delimit the sample to only one destination or region visited in the US was not possible. Japanese respondents reported a total of 48 different US destinations as the main destination while among the German respondents a total of 52 US destinations were reported. It is interesting to note that New York City, Los Angeles, Las Vegas and San Francisco were four of the top ve destinations for both Japanese and German respondents. Where they differed was that Honolulu was the most frequently mentioned main destination for the Japanese respondents while Washington, DC was the fth most frequently indicated destination for German visitors. Further delimiting the sample to visitors to these four US destinations would have reduced the Japanese sub-sample by 62.8% and the German sub-sample by 79.3%. 3.3. Measures Although the study did not directly measure the cultural values of the participants, Hofstedes widely used index scores were used to classify which members of the selected cultural groups were of medium and high UAI. Specically, those respondents who indicated they were born in Japan were assigned to the high uncertainty avoidance group while those born in

3. Methods 3.1. Data collection The data for the study were obtained from the 1996 to 1998 Inight Survey of Overseas Visitors to the United States. Annually, the US Department of Commerces Tourism Industries sponsors a survey where more than 80,000 overseas visitors are presented with a selfadministered questionnaire distributed in-ight by airline ight crew personnel prior to departure from the US. A random cluster sampling procedure is used whereby all passengers (one per family group), on randomly selected ights, during a 7 day period each month are given the survey instrument. At the time of data collection, about 60 US and foreign airlines were administering the survey. Response rates were generally quite high, averaging 58% (Tourism Industries, 1999). The survey itself is composed of 29 questions and is available in 11 languages. The purpose of the survey is to obtain information about travel pattern of overseas visitors to the US that airlines, hotel companies, as well as state and city destination marketing organizations can use in understanding the international tourism market. Items from the survey related to information search, planning, travel party and trip characteristics were used as dependent measures for the current study. For purposes of the analysis, the data set was limited to those respondents who indicated their country of birth was either the Germany and Japan. These countries were selected for their signicance to the US tourism market (i.e., in 2000, 26% of overseas arrivals resided in these two nations) but also due to their scores on Hofstedes uncertainty avoidance index. Japan ranked seventh out of 50 nations with a UAI score of 92 while Germany ranked 29th with a score of 65. Thus, Germans were grouped as medium on the UAI index while Japanese were grouped together under the high UAI index for comparison purposes, as detailed in the Measures section below. Although other nations scored lower on the UAI dimension than Germany, this country was used because of its substantive importance to the US travel market (ranked third as the origin of overseas arrivals to the US) and their relatively lower score than that of Japan. In addition, the selection of country of birth was made over country of citizenship since the literature has shown that virtually all of the cultural dimensions of interest are learned by the age of 10 years and remain relatively immune to change over the remaining life span (Hofstede, 1991).

R.B. Money, J.C. Crotts / Tourism Management 24 (2003) 191202 Table 1 Type of external search: discriminant analysis results Trip planning information sources Group Medium High F UAI (%) UAI (%) Non-marketer dominated Personal Advice from friends and relatives Neutral Travel guides Channel Members Travel agency Tour operator Marketer-dominated mass media Newspapers/magazine ads TV/radio ads PC/electronic database (Web) Government tourist ofce State/city travel ofce po

197

included in the package, if applicable, were then noted by the respondents, such as airfare, rental car, lodging, guided tours, and so forth. The second indicator of trip characteristics was the reported number of nights stayed in the US. The third was the number of US destinations visited.

32.2

17.8

36.71 0.001

4. Results To test the hypotheses and propositions, a series of univariate and multivariate statistical procedures were employed, including discriminant analysis and ANOVA, to determine how uncertainty avoidance inuenced search behavior, trip planning, travel party characteristics, and trip characteristics. A series of canonical discriminant analyzes were also conducted with high and medium UAI as the group membership variable (1, 0). The results only partially supported H1 (see Table 1), which held that the high UAI group would search more in non-marketer-dominated sources than in marketerdominated mass media sources. While, as expected, the high UAI group (Japanese) searched more often among the channel members of travel agents F 31:06; po0:001; the medium UAI group (Germans) searched signicantly more often by personal advice from friends and relatives F 36:71; po0:001; published travel guides F 4:71; po0:03: Differences in the use of published tour operators was not statistically signicant. In addition, while as expected, the high UAI group searched less among all categories of marketer-dominated mass media, only TV/radio advertising F 11:24; po0:001 and state/city travel ofces F 608:58; po0:001 categories were searched signicantly less. Proposition 1, which predicted longer trip planning lead times for the high UAI group, was not supported (see Table 2). ANOVA results showed that trip planning activity was much more intense among the medium UAI group members, who decided an average of 65 more days in advance to take the trip t 11:96; po0:001 and made their airline reservations an average of 54.8 days farther in advance t 234:06; po0:001 than the high UAI group.
Table 2 Trip planning: ANOVA results Trip planning Group Medium UAI Days before departure the decision was made to take trip Days before departure the airline reservation was made 131.2 89.8 High UAI 66.2 34.9 t po

19.7

17.5

4.71 0.03

51.3 18.5

60.8 26.6

31.06 0.001 2.60 n.s.

9.9 4.8 3.9 0.6 29.3

9.2 1.1 2.0 0.4 1.0

1.85 11.24 2.14 1.16 608.58

n.s. 0.001 n.s. n.s. 0.001

Germany were assigned to the medium uncertainty avoidance group. Although these measures of national culture are dated, Hofstede notes that national cultures change very slowly and when cultures shift,ythey shift together, so that the differences between them remain intact (1991, p. 77). Type of external search, the main dependent variable, was measured by classifying the responses of the subjects into the categories of external search (see Table 1 for classications), that is, a response of friends or relatives was deemed to be a personal source, travel guides were classied as neutral, and a travel agent and tour operator were classied as channel members, all under the non-marketer dominated category. For the marketer-dominated, mass media category, TV/ radio advertisements, newspaper/magazine ads, information acquired from government tourist ofce and city/state tourist ofce responses were included. For the research propositions, trip planning was composed of two measures: how many days before departure the decision was made to travel and how many days before departure the airline reservation was made. The travel party characteristics variable was measured by three indicators. The rst was whom, if anyone, the respondent traveled with. For example, the subject could answer he or she traveled with spouse, family, business associates, friends, or with a group. The categories were not mutually exclusive. The second was the number of adults traveling in the party; the third was the number of children in the party. The trip characteristics variable was also measured by three indicators. First, the subjects answered yes or no to the question, Was the trip prepackaged? The components that were

11.96 15.29

0.001 0.001

198 Table 3 Travel party characteristics Travel party characteristics Group

R.B. Money, J.C. Crotts / Tourism Management 24 (2003) 191202 Table 4 Trip characteristics Trip characteristics High UAI F po Discriminant analysis results Was trip prepackaged? (% yes) 14.3% 60.0% 26.9% 0.3% 10.7% 5.1% 5.1% 45.1% 29.8% 12.9% 15.7% 15.4% 25.49 8.05 1.57 24.42 9.03 8.56 t 0.000 0.005 n.s. 0.001 0.003 0.004 Items included: Airfare Rental Car Tour escort Cruise Guided tours Lodging Group Medium UAI 39.4% High UAI 56.2% F po

Medium UAI Discriminant analysis results Traveling Alone With spouse With family With business associate With friends With group

17.48

0.001

35.2% 14.3% 14.6% 1.2% 9.9% 31.9%

49.4% 1.4% 24.9% 7.5% 24.3% 50.6%

11.56 25.24 13.30 8.50 7.96 11.21 t

0.001 0.001 0.001 0.004 0.005 0.001

ANOVA results Number of adults on trip Number of children on trip

2.91 0.24

7.85 0.20

7.56 1.11

0.001 n.s.

Proposition 2, which suggested that the high UAI group would avoid the risk of traveling alone, was supported by the data (see Table 3). The medium UAI group traveled alone F 25:49; po0:001 more often than the high UAI group, which traveled more with a spouse F 8:05; po0:005; business associates F 24:42; po0:001; friends F 9:03; po0:003; and/or a group F 8:56; po0:004: Moreover, ANOVA results revealed the average number of adults on high UAI groups trips was signicantly higher t 7:5; po0:001 than for the medium UAI group. The difference in the number of children, however, was not signicant. Proposition 3, which indicated that risk-avoiding travel behavior would include more prepackaged components and tours involving shorter trip duration and fewer destinations visited, was also supported, as shown in Table 4. The high UAI group purchased prepacked tours signicantly more often F 17:48; po0:001 than the medium UAI group. In addition, the prepackaged tours they purchased included risk-reducing items such as tour escorts F 13:30; po0:001; guided tours F 7:96; po0:005; and lodging F 11:21; po0:001 signicantly more often than the high UAI group. In addition, the average number of nights in the US t 12:8; po0:001 and destinations visited t 19:6; po0:001 were both only about a third as many for the high UAI group as for the medium UAI group. In addition, results of the canonical discriminate function, shown in Table 5, reveals the discriminant functions were statistically signicant for all constructs, both individually and combined, as measured by the chisquare statistic. With an eigenvalue of 0.87 and a canonical correlation value of 0.68, all the factors accounted for a signicant amount of the variance. The Wilks lambda value of 0.53 indicated that both

ANOVA results Number of nights in US Total number of US destinations visited

14.44 3.54

5.09 1.58

12.86 19.69

0.001 0.001

Table 5 Summary of canonical discriminant analyzes: External search, trip planning, travel party and trip characteristics by UAI groups Factor Eigen Canonical Wilks Chi-square po value R lambda 0.28 0.29 0.08 0.60 0.87 0.46 0.47 0.27 0.61 0.68 0.78 0.77 0.92 0.62 0.53 254.5 200.1 68.5 484.2 474.7 0.001 0.001 0.001 0.001 0.001

External search Trip planning Travel party characteristics Trip characteristics All factors

groups were signicantly different from one another in regards to the dependent variables. Individual discriminate functions for each factor groupings provided additional insights as to the relative importance of national culture on tourist behavior. Table 5 reveals the discriminant functions were statistically signicant for all four factors. The trip characteristics variables produced the most robust statistics with a Canonical correlation value of 0.61 chi-square 484:2; po0:001 followed by trip planning variables (canonical R 0:47; chi-square 200:1; po0:001) and external search variables (canonical R 0:46; chi-square 254:5; po0:001). The nal aspect of the data analysis was testing each discriminate functions ability to correctly classify respondents into the appropriate group (see Table 6). The classication accuracy of the overall model achieved 84.7%, where 75.6% of the medium uncertainty avoidance group and 90.4% of the high uncertainty avoidance group could be correctly classied (see Table 6). The overall classication accuracy of the

R.B. Money, J.C. Crotts / Tourism Management 24 (2003) 191202 Table 6 Classication results: Percentages of respondents that could be correctly classied into national cultural groups Group High UAI (%) External search Trip planning Travel party characteristics Trip characteristics All factors 94.5 89.3 60.1 91.3 90.4 Medium UAI (%) 38.5 51.9 66.2 68.2 75.6 Overall (%) 76.7 75.0 64.9 83.8 84.7

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component-dependent variables was 76.7% for external search, 75.0% for trip planning, 63.6% for travel party characteristics, and 83.8% for trip characteristics.

5. Analysis and discussion 5.1. External search The results showed, consistent with expectations, that consumers with a higher risk tolerance seek information from marketer-dominated mass media sources than those with a lower risk prole, but only signicantly in the case of TV and radio advertising and state/city travel ofces. Also consistent with expectations, medium UAI consumers from Japan sought information from channel members, such as travel agencies more than the high UAI group of Germans, indicative of a risk avoiding strategy. However, contrary to expectations, risk tolerant cultures seek information from personal sources more than those who are risk averse. Both of these ndings could have been caused, however, by artifacts of the travel information systems in these countries. Most Japanese tend to consult the huge Japan Travel Bureau (JTB) travel agency, which strategy in fact gured prominently in the results. Such would be consistent with the Japanese tendency for rational (as opposed to emotional) and cognitive-based searching (McDonald, 1995). It is also consistent with the notion that Japanese tend to leave travel arrangements to professionals rather than to themselves or inexperienced personal information source. In addition, the Japanese may not consult personal sources because of the responsibility for a good trip it places on the advicegiver in a society where protecting face and allowing others to do so is important. 5.2. Trip planning The inuence of culture was further illuminated in the way the respondents planned their trips. Signicantly, more of the risk-avoidant Japanese respondents purchased some form of a travel package prior to their trip,

and more than half of them had the big-ticket items of lodging and airfare in the package. Also, the risk-averse group tended to prepackage more of the risk reducing elements of the trip, such as lodging and a guided tour or tour escort, preferring to leave less of their actual experience at the destination to chance. On the other hand, the more risk-accepting Germans included rental cars (a high-risk item because of the possibility of getting lost, accidents, etc.) more than any other item in the packages they did buy. However, Japanese tourists to the US did not decide to take the trip sooner nor did they plan further ahead by making an airline reservation sooner than the Germans. Planning horizons were signicantly shorter for the Japanese group, which may be caused by a Japanese tendency to rely on travel agents and tour operators who, by profession, lessen risk for their clients. Such an assertion supports the nding associated with H1 regarding whom the Japanese use as an information source: travel channel members. In fact, the average number of days before the Japanese decide to travel was about half that of the Germans (about 66 vs. 131 days). The same was true for airline reservations (about 35 vs. 89 days). This is contrary to what we might expect, i.e., risk-reducers would tend to spend more time in planning their trips in order to lessen the uncertainties of traveling to a new destination. However, risk avoiders may also have a harder time making a decision and take longer because of their search process. It may take more days before they become comfortable enough with the arrangements to make the decision to go and actually buy the airplane ticket. Another explanation may be that those who have higher tolerance for risk and who tend to favor free and independent forms of travel may nd enjoyable the trip planning process and willingly spend more time in trip planning. 5.3. Travel party characteristics As predicted, respondents in the high UAI group reported traveling alone signicantly less often than respondents in the medium UAI group. This would be consistent with safety-in-numbers, risk-avoidant behavior, not wanting to endanger ones health or life in the stereotypically dangerous New York or Los Angeles, for example. Moreover, respondents in the high UAI group were 25 times more likely to be traveling with business associates and twice as likely to be traveling with friends and organized groups. Also, as expected, respondents from the high-risk aversion group on average traveled in groups more than twice the size of those from medium-risk adverse group, at 7.85 adults and 2.91 adults, respectfully. Japanese, famous for their group mentality, probably think that there is less chance of being disappointed the more people have signed up the adventure. Both groups reported few children in

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their travel parties, less than an average of one child per group. Since the sample was delimited to primarily rst time visitors to the US (i.e., no previous visit in past 5 years), traveling with children was probably deemed too risky for both groups. While it was possible to answer both spouse and group on the survey, it is also interesting to note that Japanese traveled with their spouses signicantly less often than did the Germans. 5.4. Trip characteristics Finally, signicant differences between groups were also revealed in terms of length of stay and the number of destinations visited. As predicted, respondents from Germany stayed on average three times as long and visited two times more destinations than their counterparts in Japan. The average stay of the overseas visitor to the US is 13 nights, compared with about 14 for the German group and only 5 for the Japanese. This travel purchase pattern is consistent with the high UAI Japanese culture that seeks to minimize the risk of something going wrong or not enjoying the trip as much as would be expected. Distance and time considerations would not appear to be confounding factors, since the time and expense to actually get to the US destination does not apparently need to be amortized over more days for the Japanese in comparison to Germans, in a mental accounting sense.

more characteristics of travel behavior. In addition, the Hofstede dimensions of culture, 20 years old, are limited to their theoretical applicability, since they were designed to measure work-related values. An attempt to replicate the Hofstede index numbers in future samples would be worthwhile. Hofstede has published an updated version of his instrument called the VSM 94, which might serve this purpose. Others of his ve dimensions, such as individualism, might also be explored in relation to travel behavior. In addition, future data collection efforts might be improved by including some qualitative measures of risk avoidance or other cultural phenomena in open-ended written survey questions or through indepth interviews with select subjects. 6.2. For practitioners An issue that global marketing managers constantly face is that of standardization vs. adaptation. They must decide whether to trade the cost savings, content control, and uniform brand image of the former (Levitt, 1983) for the benet of successfully tapping local tastes and preferences of the latter (Douglas & Wind, 1987). The dilemma extends to the question of whether it is appropriate/advisable to standardize the tourist product and marketing campaign for all international potential visitors to the US, or to tailor promotion for each individual market (You et al., 2000). This study provides tourism marketers some evidence needed in making that tough call in appealing to consumers in three of the largest foreign travel markets. Regarding where marketers might best spend resources to communicate with potential customers, those in Germany seem to respond best to city or state destination marketing promotion, whereas Japanese consumers prefer talking with travel agents. Interestingly, these sources of information, along with personal word-of-mouth, are more important as information sources than marketer-dominated sources of mass media advertising, contrary to what conventional wisdom might hold. Also surprising is the fact that highly riskavoidant Japanese do not plan their trips and make decisions farther in advance than do the Germans. They may be waiting for more or better information with which to make a decision, something marketers might keep in mind when designing the marketing mix for these countries, or for countries of similar culture. Also, a group-oriented message and product certainly appeals more to the Japanese than to Germans. Since nights stayed obviously generates more revenue for host destinations, the stay longer to enjoy more sights message seems better suited for medium uncertainty avoidance cultures. However, risk-averse cultures like Japan may present more of an opportunity for increasing length of stay, since they typically stay only 5 nights and visit less than 2 places in the US per trip.

6. Implications and conclusions For academics, the study makes two contributions. First, it may guide the research agenda for an additional avenue in information search behavior, as well as usage situations. Second, it adds to a growing body of literature on the effect of national culture on a variety of marketing phenomena in a variety of contexts. The service nature of the studys context, for example, adds to our knowledge about the marketing of services. The further testing of the hypothesis and propositions herein could yield valuable insights into how cross-cultural marketing phenomena operate. 6.1. Limitations and future research Due to the highly delimited nature of the sample, the results should not be construed to be representative of all tourists from Japan and Germany, let alone all those who visit the US. Further research is needed involving other sample frames as well as other matched sample characteristics in an effort to validate this studys ndings as to the inuence of national culture on consumer decision making. In addition, future studies might include a wider variety of countries spanning from high to low along the UAI index as well as examine

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In a wider sense, the study illuminates some of the differences in external information search among the nationalities of consumers of some of the worlds major consumer markets. Cultural inuences also play a role in how consumers go about making and implementing a decision after the information has been gathered. The study has also challenged some cultural stereotypes and the common wisdom about where consumers search for their information, particularly in an international context. When planning how to communicate with consumers outside the US, American marketers would do well to consider the ramications of these processes in an ever-increasingly global marketplace.

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