گردشگری و اوقات فراغت (Jan 2024)
The Strategy of Touchpoints Agricultural Tourism Services Based on the Motivation of Tourists (Case Study: South Khorasan Saffron Farm)
Abstract
Agricultural endeavors alone are insufficient to meet the requirements of rural communities. Consequently, comprehensive investigations have been undertaken to assess the economic viability of tourism farms. Nevertheless, a field that holds promise for further exploration is the mapping of tourists’ experiences within agricultural landscapes. The focus of this study is on mapping the journey of tourists in agricultural settings, with South Khorasan province serving as the research area due to its potential. The research methodology employed a standard questionnaire tool, "Motivational factors in tourists," with a reliability higher than 0.95 according to Cronbach's alpha method for all dimensions. In addition to questionnaires, semi-structured and in-depth interviews were also conducted with 30 domestic agricultural tourists who visited a saffron farm in Birjand in November 1402. Due to the limited statistical population, the sample is equal to the population. Therefore, the census was taken. The results of the questionnaire data were analyzed using SPSS 26 software and a descriptive statistical test method. As a result, we identified the most important motivations of tourists and their components. The interview data was also analyzed using a qualitative method based on foundational data theory and employing open, central, and selective coding, which led to the discovery of tourists' touchpoints in three main categories: before the trip, during the trip, and after the trip. This research presents a strategy for creating or developing services by integrating tourists' motivation with touchpoints based on tourist expectations, offering practical insights for the development of agricultural tourism. In the end, five key requirements for the design of touchpoints in agricultural tourism farm services are introduced, providing actionable recommendations for stakeholders in the field. 1. Introduction The tourism industry plays a crucial role in the global economy, contributing significantly to job creation, export income, and domestic added value. Within the tourism literature, design has been associated with the planning and development of tourism, specifically addressing the characteristics of design in the development of facilities and infrastructures to facilitate tourist activities. Service design is a topic that examines services from the perspective of both the customer and the service provider (Holmlid & Evenson, 2008). Moreover, service design involves designers who aim to create solutions through a heuristic, iterative process, addressing the desired issues systematically. A critical aspect of service design is the visual representation known as the service blueprint, which illustrates the customer's interaction with service personnel and the overall service experience (Shostack,1982). Similarly, interaction points between customers and service evidence or touchpoints are essential elements in service design (Bitner et al., 1990). The development of the concept of service in service design is also significant. It is understood as a mental image of the service (i.e., service in the mind) held by customers, service personnel, and designers. This concept mediates between customer needs and the strategic goal of service providers (Goldstein et al., 2002). Service design, with its focus on adaptability and customer-centric solutions, offers a promising approach to addressing the multifaceted nature of the tourism experience. While the direct application of service design in tourism can be challenging, the potential of design elements such as service touchpoints and customer journeys, when considered as stand-alone design elements, offers optimism about their potential in the context of tourism. Tourism encompasses a wide range of services, including airlines, accommodation, and entertainment, as well as interactions with places, objects (e.g., landscapes), people (e.g., locals), and other sources of interaction in tourist destinations. These elements are often classified as services. 2. Literature Review Service design is a unique field with a deep history rooted in the human-centered design tradition of industrial design. It involves a set of activities that plan and organize people, infrastructure, communication, and material components of a service to enhance its quality and the interaction between the service provider and its customers (Marie-Thérèse & Schneiders, 2011). Additionally, the creation of a common language for organizing and planning these components to improve the quality of interactions is a fundamental aspect of service design (Government, 2014). New customer-oriented service behaviors are developed and tested through previous interactions and communications between users and service users and their providers, leading to optimal solutions. Service design adopts a human-centered approach based on customer experience and design decisions by systematically and iteratively identifying stakeholders and their perspectives, guiding users through the learning cycle (Saco & Roberto, 2008). The primary definition of service often focuses on innovation in service performance, which includes planning and developing the ability to use practical elements for a new service experience (Bocken & Prendevilleg, 2016). Design methods have been applied across various service domains, especially experience-oriented services, such as entertainment, tourism, and hospitality. Recent studies highlight the application of service design in the tourism experience and identify it as a commonly used tool in service design research to explore and evaluate tourism experiences (Stickdorn & Zehrer, 2009). For instance, Tussyadiah & Zach, (2010) utilized mobile ethnography to capture and understand experiences in tourism service design, recording user memories to evaluate visitors' experiences with new tourist attractions. This approach served as a basis for designing better tour experiences in destinations, grounded in a consumer-driven innovation strategy (Trischler & Zehrer, 2012). Service design tools such as user personas and service scenarios have been employed to provide tailored experiences to different visitors in theme parks. These studies emphasize using design tools to discover, observe, and understand visitor experiences, identify problems arising from these experiences, and design better experiences. Although various terms are used to describe these approaches in service design (e.g., service design, user experience design, customer experience design), and the outcomes of the service experience design process vary, it is clear that the primary focus of design research is to create a high-Quality experience for consumers, which implies the necessity for service providers to work closely with consumers to understand their experience better and validate different service scenarios created through an iterative process. This underscores the importance of consumer participation in designing experiences (Martin & Hannington, 2012). 3. Methodology Considering the importance of field research, experimental research, and testing in service design, a comprehensive set of methods was employed for this project. The research included three stages: in the first stage, we used a questionnaire to identify the main motivations of tourists visiting the saffron agricultural tourism farm, and in the second stage, in-depth interviews with tourists were conducted to analyze the collected data and identify the touchpoints experienced by tourists. The last step was to create a connection between the touchpoints and the motivations of tourists to visit. The statistical population of this research is those who visited a saffron farm in Birjand in November 1402. Due to the limited statistical population, the sample is equal to the population. Therefore, the census was taken. The estimated number of the sample was about 30 people (15 women and 15 men). In this research, in addition to library research helping in discovering relevant literature, a questionnaire was developed to investigate tourists` motivational factors. This 15-question survey aimed to assess motivations across four dimensions: relaxation-recreational motivation, ecotourism motivation, historical-searching motivation, and pilgrimage-cultural motivation. The questionnaire used a 5-point Likert scale for scoring. Face validity was confirmed by using the opinions of several professors and experts; its reliability was assessed using Cronbach's alpha, yielding coefficients higher than 0.95, which is considered desirable (Ebrahimzadeh & Volashjardi Farahani, 2013). Data analysis was performed using SPSS software version 26. 4. Results Based on the location and timing of the research, as well as the available samples, 30 questionnaires were collected from agricultural tourists at the Birjand saffron farm, comprising 15 men and 15 women. The scope of the research was determined using a Likert scale, ranging from 1 (very low) to 5 (very high), with scores between 30 and 150. Thus, scores of 30-60 indicate a very low tendency, 61-90 low, 91-120 average, 121-150 high, and 151-180 very high. Preliminary analysis reveals that the majority of respondents are aged 20-50 years, accounting for 43.3% of the sample. A significant portion holds a bachelor's degree, representing 46.7% of respondents. The sample exhibits Considerable diversity in the job groups sample, including students, housewives, retirees, freelancers, nature tourists, businessmen, and other jobs groups, including students, housewives, retirees, freelancers, nature tourists, businessmen, and other professionals such as graphic designers, marketing managers, engineers, lawyers, teachers, and university professors. The largest occupational group is "other," comprising 26.7% of the sample, followed by students at 16.7%. Married individuals make up 66.7% of the sample, and those without children constitute 40%, while those with four children represent the smallest group at 6.7%. A notable finding is that 80% of the sample consists of out-of-province tourists, contrasting with the 20% of in-province tourists. According to the questionnaire result on tourist motivation, the highest score was in the "ecotourism motivation" dimension, with a mean score of 125.3, and the "relaxation-recreational motivation" dimension, with a mean score of 123. These scores correspond to "very high" levels of desire, with 83.55% and 99.81 of responses, respectively. The "Historical-searching motivation" dimension scored 119, indicating a "high" level of desire at 79.33%. Service design tools were employed to understand tourist touchpoints thoroughly. The tourist experience is interconnected, with each component influencing the overall experience. Through in-depth interviews with 30 sample tourists, we used the customer experience map tool to identify all touchpoints between tourists and the service provided by the saffron tourism farm. This study integrated these touchpoints with the main motivations of tourists, as presented in Table 7. Consequently, five key requirements for designing touchpoints in agritourism farm services were identified. 5. Conclusion This paper proposes a method to integrate tourists' main motivations and touchpoints using service design tools such as customer experience mapping. These tools facilitate the creation and implementation of differentiated services through the identification and enhancement of touchpoints. This integration led to the development of five guidelines for designing touchpoints based on tourists' primary motivations. Implementing a strategic approach to touchpoints represents a thought pattern in service design that enables stakeholders in agricultural tourism farms to seek innovative and effective solutions for addressing small-scale tourist farms with limited resources through the deepening and improvement of existing touchpoints. At the same time, larger companies can achieve this by increasing both the number and quality of touchpoints. This research stands out from existing studies that have primarily focused on investigating and understanding the dimensions of the tourism experience, tourist motivations, and their relationship with services. Instead, it emphasizes defining meaningful relationships between tourists' motivations and agricultural tourism services, thereby assuring an improvement in service quality using the introduced tools and models.
