Part I Reading Comprehension (10 points)
Directions: Reading the following passage and choose the correct answers
The ways in which products are put together, that is product formulation, are the most important responses marketing managers make to what they know of their customers' needs and interests. Prod
uct decisions, with all their implications for the management of service operations and profitability, reflect all aspects of an organization's management policies, including long-term growth strategy, investment, and personnel policy. They largely determine the corporate image an organization creates in the minds of its existing and prospective customers.
旅游英语专业
To a great extent, the design of products determines what prices can be charged, what forms of promotion are needed, and what distribution channels are used. For all these reasons, customer-related product decisions are the basis of marketing strategy and tactics. As the most important of the four P's in the marketing mix (product, price, promotion and place), product formulation requires careful consideration in any branch of marketing. Because of the particular nature and characteristics of travel and tourism, the subject is especially complex in the tourism industry.
Any visit to a tourism destination comprises a mix of several different components, including travel, accommodation, attractions and other facilities, such as catering and entertainment. Sometimes all the components are purchased from a commercial supplier, e.g. when a customer buys an inclusive holiday from a tour operator, or asks a travel agent to put the components together
for a business trip. Sometimes customers supply most of the components themselves, e.g. when a visitor drives his own car to stay with friends at a destination.
Conveniently known as a "components' view", the conceptualization of travel and tourism products as a group of components or elements brought together in a 'bundle' selected to satisfy needs, is a vital requirement for marketing managers. It is central to this view that the components of the bundle may be designed, altered and fitted together in ways calculated to match identified customer needs.
As far as the tourist is concerned, the product covers the complete experience from the time he leaves home to the time he returns to it. Thus the tourist product is to be considered as an amalgam of three main components of attractions, facilities at the destination, and accessibility of the destination. In other words, the tourist product is not an airline seat or a hotel bed, or relaxing on a sunny beach, but rather an amalgam of many components, or package. Airline seats and hotel beds, etc. are merely elements or components of a total tourist product which is a composite product. Without detracting in any way from the general validity and relevance of this overall view of tourism products, it has to be recognized that airlines, hotels, attractions, car rental and other producer organizations in the industry, generally take a much narrower view of the products they sell. They focus primarily on their own services. Many large hotel groups and transport operators employ product managers in their marketing teams and handle product formulation and development entirely in terms of the operations they control. Hotels refer to 'conference products', for example, or 'leisure
products'; airlines to 'business class products'; and so on. For this reason, the overall product concept sets the context in which tourism marketing is conducted but it has only limited value in guiding the practical product design decisions that managers of individual producer organizations have to make. A components' view of products still holds good, however, because it is in the nature of service products that they can be divided into a series of specific service operations or elements, which combine to make up the particular products customers buy.
It is usually highly instructive to analyze any service producer's operations in terms of the full sequence of contacts between customer and operator, from the time that they make initial inquiries, until they have used the product and left the premises. Even for a product such as that provided by a museum, there is ample scope to analyze all the stages of a visit and potential points of contact that occur from the moment the customer is in sight of the entrance until he leaves the building, say two hours later. Putting the components' view in slightly different terms, individual service producers designing products must define service concept in terms of the bundles of goods and services sold to the customer and the relative importance of each component to the customer.
To bring the two distinctive aspects of tourist products together —the overall view and that of individual producer organizations —it is possible to consider them as two different dimensions. The o
verall view is a horizontal dimension in the sense that a series of individual product components are included in it, and customers, or tour operators acting as manufacturers, can make
their selection to produce the total experience. By contrast, the producers' view is a vertical dimension of specific service operations organized around the identified needs and wants of target segments of customers. Producers typically have regard for their interactions with other organizations on the horizontal dimensions, but their principal concern is with the vertical dimension of their own operations.
From the standpoint of a potential customer considering any form of tourist visit, the product may be defined as a bundle or package of tangible and intangible components, based on activity at a destination. The package is perceived by the tourist as the experience available at a price, and may include destination attractions and environment, destination facilities and services, accessibility of the destination, images of the destination, and price to the customer.
Destination attractions and environment that largely determine customers' choice and influence prospective buyers' motivations include natural attractions, built attractions, cultural attractions and social attractions. Combined, these aspects of a destination comprises what is generically, if loosely,
known as its environment. The number of visitors the environment can accommodate in a typical range of activities on a typical busy day without damage to its elements and without undermining its attractiveness to visitors is known as its capacity.
Destination facilities and services are elements within the destination, or linked to it, which make it possible for visitors to stay and in other ways enjoy and participate in the attractions. These include accommodation units, restaurants, transport at the destination, sports activities, retail outlets, and other facilities and services.
Accessibility of the destination refers to the elements that affect the cost, speed and the convenience with which a traveler may reach a destination, including infrastructure, equipment, operational factors and government regulations.
The attitudes and images customers have towards products strongly influence their buying decisions. Destination images are not necessarily grounded in experience or facts, but they are powerful motivators in travel and tourism. Images and the expectations of travel experiences are closely linked in prospective customers' mind.
Any visit to a destination carries a price, which is the sum of what it costs for travel, accommodation,
and participation in a selected range of services at the available attractions. Because most destinations offer a range of products, and appeal to a range of segments, price in the travel and tourism industry covers a very wide range. V isitors traveling thousands of miles and using luxury hotels, for example, pay a very different price in New Y ork than students sharing campus-style accommodation with friends. Y et the two groups may buy adjacent seats in a Broadway theater. Price varies by season, by choice of activities, and internationally by exchange rates as well as by distance traveled, transport mode, and choice of facilities and services.
With a little thought it will be clear that the elements comprising the five product components, although they are combined and integrated in the visitor's experience, are in fact capable of
extensive and more or less independent variation over time. Some of these variations are planned, as in the case of the Disney World developments in previously unused areas around Orlando, Florida, where massive engineering works have transformed the natural environment and created a major tourist destination. By contrast, in New Y ork, London, or Paris, the city environments have not been much altered for travel and tourism purposes, although there have been massive planned changes in the services and facilities available to visitors. Many changes in destination attractions are not planned, and in northern Europe the decline in popularity of traditional seaside resorts since t
he 1960s has been largely the result of changes in the accessibility of competing destinations in the sunnier south of the Continent. Changes in the product components often occur in spite of, and not because of, the wishes of governments and destination planners. They occur because travel and tourism, especially at the international level, is a relatively free market, with customers able to pursue new attractions as they become available. Changes in exchange rates, which alter the prices of destinations, are certainly not planned by the tourism industry, but have a massive effect on visitor numbers, as the movements between the UK and the USA since 1978 have demonstrated. It is in the promotional field of images and perceptions that some of the most interesting changes occur, and these are marketing decisions. The classic recent example of planned image engineering may be found in the "I Love New Y ork" campaign, which, based on extensive preliminary market research, created a significant improvement to the "Big Apple's" appeal in the early 1980s.
The view of the product taken by customers, whether or not they buy an inclusive package from a tour operator or travel wholesaler, is essentially the same view or standpoint as that adopted by tour operators. Tour operators act on behalf of the interests of tens or hundreds of thousands of customers, and their brochures are a practical illustration of blending the five product components.
The overall view is also the standpoint of national, regional and local tourist organizations, whose res
ponsibilities usually include the coordination and presentation of the product components in their areas. This responsibility is an important one even if the destination tourist organizations are engaged only in liaison and joint marketing, and not in the sale of specific product offers to travelers.
In considering the product, we should note that there is no natural or automatic harmony between components, such as attractions and accommodation, and they are seldom under any one organization's control. Even within component sectors such as accommodation there will usually be many different organizations, each with different, perhaps conflicting, objectives and interests. Indeed it is the diversity or fragmentation of overall control, and the relative freedom of producer organizations to act according to their perceived self-interests, at least in the short term, which makes it difficult for national, regional and even local tourist organizations to exert much coordinating influence, either in marketing or in planning. Part of this fragmentation simply reflects the fact that most developed destinations offer a wide range of tourism products and deal with a wide range of segments. In the long term, however, the future success of a destination must involve
coordination and recognition of mutual interests between all the components of the overall tourism product.
The overall view of tourism products is highly relevant to the marketing decisions taken by individual producers, especially in establishing the interrelationships and scope for cooperation between suppliers in different sectors of the industry, e.g. between attractions and accommodation, or between transport and accommodation. But in order to design their product offers around specific service operations, there are internal dimensions of products for marketers to consider; these are common to all forms of consumer marketing and part of widely accepted marketing theory. Marketing managers need to think about the product on three levels:
The core product, which is the essential service or benefit designed to satisfy the identified needs of target customer segments.
The tangible product, which is the specific offer for sale stating what a customer will receive for his money.
The augmented product, which comprises all the forms of added value producers may build into their tangible product offers to make them more attractive to their intended customers.
The following example of an inclusive weekend break in a hotel will help to explain what the three levels mean in practice. The product offer is a package comprising two night's accommodation and t
wo breakfasts, which may be taken at any one of a chain of hotels located in several different destinations. Because of the bedroom design and facilities available at the hotels, the package is designed to appeal to professional couples with young children. The product is offered for sale at an inclusive price through a brochure, which is distributed at each of the hotels in the chain and through travel agents. The example reveals the three product levels.
Core product is intangible but comprises the essential need or benefit as perceived and sought by the customer, expressed in words and pictures designed to motivate purchase. In the example under discussion, the core product may be defined as relaxation, rest, fun and self-fulfillment in a family context. It should be noted that the core product reflects characteristics of the target customer segments, not the hotel. The hotel may, and does aim to, design its core product better than its competitors, and to achieve better delivery of the sought benefits. But all its competitors are aiming at the same basic customer needs and offering virtually identical benefits. Customers' core needs usually tend not to change very quickly, although a hotel's ability to identify and better satisfy such needs can change considerable. Since customer perceptions are never precisely understood, there is ample scope for improvement in this area.
Tangible product comprises the formal offer of the product as set out in a brochure, stating exactly w
hat is to be provided at a specified time at a specified price. In the example under discussion, the tangible product is two nights and two breakfasts at a particular location, using rooms of a defined standard, with bathroom, TV, telephone, etc. The provision(if any) of elevators, coffee shops, air-conditioning and swimming pool are all within the formal product and the name of