Customer inspiration in a tourism context: an investigation of driving and moderating factors

Abstract

Customer inspiration is an emerging and promising topic in marketing literature, yet this concept is still deserving of more attention from tourism scholars. This pioneer study aims at explaining tourist inspiration from the drivers and moderators perspective. Specifically, place attachment and openness to experience are hypothesized as drivers of tourist inspiration while service value to peaceful life and service value to social recognition are investigated as moderators. To test the proposed hypotheses, partial least squares structural equation modelling (PLS-SEM) is applied to a sample of 238 international tourists from Europe, America and Asia travelling to Vietnam. The results indicate that both place attachment and openness to experience have positive effects on tourist inspiration. In addition, service value to peaceful life is found to weaken the relationship between openness to experience and inspiration. Meanwhile, service value to social recognition is found to mitigate the association between place attachment and inspiration. These research findings provide both theoretical and practical implications for tourism scholars and practitioners.