Fase III Acción Participativa

Participation of small to medium sized organisations in the Tourism 95 study was limited, and travel agencies were not specifically identified in its findings. One academic paper on travel agents reported on research conducted in Australia, but the sample was mainly drawn from the US agents attending a Queensland conference (Rutledge and Williams 1995). A review of the existing academic literature revealed a number of facts: a) although there were a number of studies of the planning and scanning practices of small businesses, none of them specifically concentrated on marketing research practices; b) a limited number of studies into the marketing research practices of businesses in general existed, but none of them focused on small businesses; and c) there was little written on travel agencies. None of the existing studies was specifically concerned with small travel agents. Resultingly, an exploratory study was undertaken to profile and analyse the marketing research practices of small travel agents.

In order to characterise the marketing research orientation of small travel agents, the following research questions were raised:

1. What were the marketing research activities of, and techniques used by, small travel agents?

travel agents and their marketing research orientation?

3. What was the relationship between the individual characteristics of decision makers in small travel agencies (such as their age, formal education, and business specialisation) and the marketing research orientation of the agencies?

4. What were the perceptions of decision-makers in small travel agencies with regard to the cost and complexity of marketing research?

5. What were the perceptions of decision-makers in small travel agencies with regard to airline/wholesaler control over their product, and the amount of marketing research performed by airlines/wholesalers?

In accordance with the definition of a small business provided by the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) classification system (ABS 1993-94) the sample in this research study was limited to businesses with fewer than 20 employees. Other guidelines for the definition of a small travel agent were the annual gross turnover of the agency (less than $25m), and the following common management or organisational characteristics which are traditionally associated with a “small” business: a) independently owned; b) closely controlled by the owner/manager; and c) the operations of which are usually locally based, although its markets might not be (Small Business in Australia 1992).

In this study, the questionnaire used in the Tourism 95 study was used as the foundation for an instrument to profile the general characteristics and marketing research orientation of small travel agencies. The section that was based on the AMA questionnaire was updated to the most recent work that was then in print (Kinnear and Root 1995). Sections of the AMA questionnaire on marketing research activities and techniques were shortened to make them more relevant to small businesses. Otherwise, these sections were used without alteration to enable comparative analyses. Questions were added to identify various characteristics of the decision- makers of small travel agencies, such as their age, education, area of specialisation, and their management orientation. Finally, a section of three questions was included to determine the perceptions of respondents of the level of control exercised by airlines and wholesalers; the level of research activity performed by airlines and wholesalers; and the cost and usefulness of marketing research. The initial draft was pretested with 20 marketing executives (mostly from the travel and hospitality fields).

The final questionnaire, after two stages of refinement, was administered during personal interviews conducted by the final year undergraduate marketing research students of a major Melbourne university. A non-probability sample (Churchill, 1995) using a combination of judgement and convenience, was utilised, with the students each being asked to choose five travel agencies within the greater Melbourne area. Necessary guidelines were provided to prevent duplication and to ensure a sample distribution profile with required characteristics according to the judgement component of the research design, i.e., students’ choices were restricted to those agencies that conformed to the selection criteria provided.

The majority of respondents interviewed within each agency comprised the primary decision-makers. In other cases, the respondent was nominated by the decision-maker as the person with an intimate knowledge of the organisation. The interviews were conducted at the place of business of the respondent. Respondents were provided with a copy of the questionnaire at the beginning of the interview to try to ensure that misunderstandings did not occur because of the technical nature of questions relating to research activities and techniques.

A total of 104 respondents from as many travel agencies was interviewed. Four agencies were excluded later from the analysis because their location fell outside the boundaries of the Melbourne Metropolitan area. Three travel agencies were excluded because they had more than 20 employees. A further six questionnaires were excluded because the names of respondents were not disclosed. Although an assurance of full confidentiality was given to all agencies, the name and location of each respondent were considered a necessary prerequisite to ensure that duplication did not occur, and that the results were not contaminated because of an inclusion of an agency representative without the authority to act on behalf of the decision-maker. The final sample used in the analysis consisted of 91 travel agencies.

Attempts were made to quantify the relevant population of the study. The Australian Federation of Travel Agents claimed around 500 members. Membership of this organisation is voluntary. The Travel Agents Licensing Authority stated that there were 1018 licensed travel agents in Victoria, but there were no other statistics kept by the organisation. The most comprehensive records were kept by the Travel Compensation Fund, which is located in Sydney. Its records showed that there were

807 licensed travel agents in Victoria listed as head offices. A further 334 licensed travel agents have branch locations in Victoria with head offices in that State or elsewhere. The total number of licensed travel agents in Victoria was 1141. At the time of the enquiry, there were no statistics on numbers of personnel employed or annual turnover and the database of the Fund did not allow the easy separation of agents located in the Metropolitan area from country areas of the State. Manual calculation based on postcode revealed 930 travel agents in the Greater Melbourne region, with 630 listed as head offices, and 300 listed as branches with head offices in Victoria or elsewhere.

In keeping with the exploratory nature of the study, the variables and their relationships were analysed within the boundaries of the five research questions listed earlier. For the purposes of simplifying and clarifying the initial analyses, variables were collapsed by recoding the data either into two categories based on high or low value split at the median level, or in three categories split at the 33 and 67 percentiles approximately.

In summary, the study provided the following answers to the research questions (for a discussion of the full results, see Yaman and Shaw 1998b):

A general understanding of the marketing research activities of, and techniques used by, small travel agents was established.

Most organisational characteristics were not related to marketing research participation, although greater devotion of resources to marketing research was reflected in more comprehensive usage of marketing research, and a more positive attitude to the cost-effectiveness of marketing research in small organisations. The desirability of travel agents considering seriously the role of marketing research in assisting in clarifying the future options for the sector was noted.

As in the second question, most individual characteristics of the decision-makers of small travel agencies were not related to the marketing research orientation of the agency. The lack of a significant relationship between the education level of respondents and the marketing research activities of, and techniques used by, the agency was of interest. It would have been expected that respondents who were formally educated in a business discipline would be more familiar with the various techniques and activities.

This study confirmed the assertions of Andreasen (1983) that managers of small businesses harbour certain “myths” about marketing research. One of these myths is that marketing research is too expensive to conduct for small enterprises.

Results indicated that small travel agents, in general, believed that enough research was conducted by airlines/wholesalers to determine customer needs. However, further research was needed to ensure that these perceptions are in keeping with the reality. Issues such as the relevance of the type of research conducted by airlines/wholesalers to the specialised needs of small travel agency customers need to be examined. For example, a US Travel Data Centre Survey found that about 5 per cent of family travellers believed that it would cost them more to use a travel agent (Green 1996). It was also asserted that families in the United States began to book their own travel instead of using a travel agent because they did not trust travel agents (Green 1996). Do such trends exist in the Australian travel market?

The sampling selection procedure in this study was not strictly probability-based, and the sampling proportion was probably about 10 per cent of the relevant local population. Therefore, the results could not be projected to the nominal population unreservedly. Rather, the scope of the study was exploratory, with the intention of providing some useful and suggestive base case data. In this respect, the study was successful. A basis has been provided for a comparison of the travel agency sector with other elements of the tourism system, particularly in terms of the indicative activity levels regarding marketing research. Further, differences were observed within the travel agency sample which deserved research, e.g., are differences in marketing research usage based on reflective managerial judgments, or are they incidental to the genuine lack of familiarity of managers with the field? Regardless of this answer, it is clear that there is widespread unfamiliarity with MR techniques, and hence the opportunity to remedy that situation profitably - for both the educator and the travel agency.

Another limitation of this study was the suspicion or perception of some interviewers that some of the travel agent respondents were providing invalid or unreliable responses. That is, on occasion, some interviewers found it difficult to accept some of the answers, on various grounds. For example, respondents may have stated that they frequently used Likert scales, and other techniques, but the interviewer may have

detected a general lack of sophistication in most aspects of a small suburban agency. Whether social desirability, pride, or other factors such as the desire to conclude the interview quickly, were operating, is unclear but not unimportant in determining the confidence that may be placed in the data. This difficulty in obtaining reliable data from studies of small firms is “traditional” according to Smeltzer, Fann, and Nikolaisen (1988). Dollinger (1985) noted that structured personal interviews, as in this case, might well be preferable to mail surveys in this context because, although more time consuming and consequently usually being restricted to smaller sample sizes, they yield more reliable data.