A study on the effects of response time on travel package attributes

Abstract

The rapid growth of online surveys in the past decade has raised questions about the effects of response time on the results. The focus of our current study is to discuss the impact of response time on various travel package attributes, thereby understanding consumer cognitive process. This study makes use of a recently conducted conjoint analysis experiment on travel package preferences in order to gain insights into the impact of response time on attribute importance and willingness to pay (WTP). Accordingly, the respondents are grouped as fast and slow depending on their response time and their differences in conjoint attribute importance estimates are investigated. The study also examines the changes in consumer willingness to pay for the two groups. Additionally, the distinctions in socioeconomic characteristics between the fast and slow respondents are also analyzed. The results and conclusions obtained from this research will help tour operators to scrutinize the time taken by consumers and thereby deploy appropriate marketing strategy based on the respective importance values and WTP trends.