The Romanian Tourists
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CONSUMER’S BEHAVIOURAL PATTERNS: THE ROMANIAN TOURISTS Ingrid Magda Rosca Per citar o enllaçar aquest document: Para citar o enlazar este documento: Use this url to cite or link to this publication: http://hdl.handle.net/10803/482205 ADVERTIMENT. L'accés als continguts d'aquesta tesi doctoral i la seva utilització ha de respectar els drets de la persona autora. Pot ser utilitzada per a consulta o estudi personal, així com en activitats o materials d'investigació i docència en els termes establerts a l'art. 32 del Text Refós de la Llei de Propietat Intel·lectual (RDL 1/1996). Per altres utilitzacions es requereix l'autorització prèvia i expressa de la persona autora. En qualsevol cas, en la utilització dels seus continguts caldrà indicar de forma clara el nom i cognoms de la persona autora i el títol de la tesi doctoral. No s'autoritza la seva reproducció o altres formes d'explotació efectuades amb finalitats de lucre ni la seva comunicació pública des d'un lloc aliè al servei TDX. 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DOCTORAL THESIS CONSUMER’S BEHAVIOURAL PATTERNS: THE ROMANIAN TOURISTS ROȘCA INGRID MAGDA 2017 DOCTORAL THESIS CONSUMER’S BEHAVIOURAL PATTERNS: THE ROMANIAN TOURISTS ROȘCA INGRID MAGDA 2017 JOINT DOCTORAL PROGRAME IN LAW, ECONOMIC AND BUSINESS Supervised by Dra. A. BIKFALVI · Universitat de Girona | Dra. P. PRESAS MAYNEGRE · Universitat de Barcelona Presented in partial fulfilment of the requirements for a doctoral degree from the University of Girona ii Copyright © 2017 by Roșca Ingrid Magda iii FOREWORD Since 2011, when I decided to choose University of Girona, I have started a long, hard and also beautiful journey into the insights of human behaviour. Coordinated by my dearest friend Dra. Andrea Bikfalvi, one of the best professors of the university, and my darling (not so) big sister Dra. Pilar Presas, from prestigious University of Barcelona, I discovered the importance of tourism science, in a wonderful trip to the world of academia. We have put together our experience, knowledge and passion for tourism and economics, into a doctoral dissertation with interesting findings regarding the travel consumer behaviour. Five years of hard, continuously, assiduous work had passed. There were years full of hopes, attempts, dropouts, retries, elation and perseverance. I would like to express my gratitude to persons that guided me for a while in my trip of academic construction: Dr. Jaume Guia and Dra. Raquel Camprubi. I also address my appreciation to Natalia Adell Calvet for her support on statistics. For a period of more than one year (2014-2015) I had been a proud fellow of the notorious Romanian Academy – Institute of World Economy, whom I would like to give thanks for sustaining me in national and international conferences and in writing academic papers. Nonetheless, my gratitude is directed also to Dr. Sarmiza Pencea, who helped me to understand better the world of academics. Together with Dr. Valeriu Franc, they assisted me to improve the thesis with a more meaningful correlation between Romanian writing style and Spanish (Catalan) academic requirements. My appreciation is directed also to Prof. Marin Burcea and researcher Stefan Bruno that trusted me to provide me useful information regarding the Romanian touristic behaviour. Through their prestigious international project titled ‘Tourism Entrepreneur’, propriety of National Foundation of Young Managers (NFYM) in association with Asociación Agraria de Jóvenes Agricultores de Almeria, Spain and National Association of Rural and Cultural Tourism, Romania, they trained my perception for a more analytical view of the statistical data. Five wonderful and productive years had passed and thanks to University of Girona (Andrea Bikfalvi) University of Barcelona (Pilar Presas), Romanian Academy (Sarmiza Pencea iv and Valeriu Franc) and NFYM (Marin Burcea and Stefan Bruno), I succeeded, from writing a truly interesting business research into developing a real doctoral thesis of international level. From all my hart, I would like to thank Prof. Marcela C., my mother or simply Wichy – as I call her, for supporting me financially (as much as she could) and more important morally! When I got lost on this academic road, she told me that there does not exist a better friend than a daughter nor a better daughter than you. I know it was hard for you but I know you will do it again if necessary (hope not). Although I appreciate all my teachers, the most important lesson I received it from my granddad: time does not wait. I promised to take him with me when I will defend my thesis, to see the places that I felt in love with, Girona. He suddenly passed away in 2014, living behind an empty spot, an unfinished sentence and a priceless memory. He was always very proud of me. Grandpa, I miss our academic discussions related to the thesis, and I hope you agree with the final version. Thank you Andrea for trusting me! Thank you Pilar for supporting me! Thank you both for being my friends! v ABSTRACT The noun behaviour, representing the manner of conducting oneself, illustrates the main idea of the entire doctoral thesis. Along with the commercial part, this PhD dissertation will focus on explaining how do consumers, respectively, tourists behave. And for the findings to be revealed, there was conducted an analysis on the Romanian tourists. Hence, the main research question is “Which are the main variables (social and touristic) in defining the profile of the traveller?” This doctoral thesis is structured in five chapters (introduction, literature review, methodology, results, and conclusions). The first chapter summarizes the justification in choosing the research theme, the objectives and gaps to be filled, and the structure of the thesis. The second chapter extracts some important theoretical information from academics and specialists in consumer and tourist behaviour, analysing the decision making process in the context of the rational choice and ends up with revealing some aspects regarding the behaviour of tourists having nationality as main discriminator factor. The third chapter represents the methodology. This section begins with a short description of touristic Romania, aimed to position the reader’s mind on the environment of the research. The methodology is based on the analysis of a questionnaire given to a sample of 5600 Romanian tourists who had travelled at least one time in the previous year of the research. The forth chapter is the most important section of the doctoral thesis, containing the results of this research. The fifth chapter is the section where are being discussed the accomplished objectives. This section concludes the entire doctoral thesis by evaluating the positive, the interesting and the negative points of this analysis. The results were analysed through IBM SPSS 17 statistical program. A descriptive statistics analysis was conducted. First there were investigated the socio-economical factors in determine the social profile of the individual. Hereafter, the relationship between those factors and the main preferences for an inland vacation revealed the profile of the domestic tourist. The analysis was continued by the investigation of the profile of Romanian tourists in abroad vacations. These results revealed the main differences between the inland and abroad vi holiday preferences. By the end of this section the analysis of the relationship between the socio-demographic factors and the preferences for both domestic and international travel variables established the main characteristics of the behavioural patterns of Romanian tourists. Based on the discovered results, this