James Cook University Subject Handbook - 2000

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TO2006:03

Tourist and Customer Behaviour Management

Townsville, Cairns

26 lectures, 26 hours practicals. Second semester.

Available to Bachelor of Business, Graduate Diploma of Tourism and Master of Tourism students.

Staff: Professor P Pearce (Townsville campus); Dr E Kim (Cairns campus).

Topics include customer and tourist behaviour for planning and management of tourist enterprises; psychological perspectives of customer behaviour; tourist motivation, decision-making, attitudes and attitude change and memory; personality, cognitive and social psychological perspectives; mindfulness-mindlessness distinction, information processing, attribution theory, social situation analysis and cognitive mapping; methodology; behavioural observation, behavioural mapping, questionnaire design, interviews and experimental studies; statistical analysis and applications.

Learning Objectives:

  1. to introduce students to the key questions being studied in this area and to give them at least a basic understanding of the concepts and theories which have been used to investigate these questions;
  2. to examine the ways in which the research findings and concepts and theories presented in the lectures and readings can be applied in actual tourism management situations;
  3. to introduce students to research techniques for collecting information on customers and tourists and their experiences. This will be the primary goal of the practical sessions;
  4. to use tourist behaviour management to demonstrate the skills of analytical thinking, which include the ability to find, comprehend and summarise information from research reports and theoretical discussions, to recognise the problems and limitations of existing literature and to develop new applications of theories and concepts;
  5. the goal of this subject is to introduce students to a series of concepts, theories and research approaches from the social sciences which can be applied to understand tourists and help in the management of tourism. The subject is concerned with what tourists do, where they do it, why they did it and what they think and feel about it.

Assessment to be advised.

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