Tourism attitudes and preferences among university students (Gen Z)
Background
In the financial year 2018-2019, tourism contributed $60.8 billion dollars to Australia’s GDP (Tourism Research Australia, 2020). Generation Z and students in particular tend to travel in their spare time in between work or study obligations and often venture significant distances to preferred destinations. Generation Z is likely to represent a significant emerging tourism market as they tend to be better educated than previous generations (Spiro, 2006) and will tend to have higher levels of disposable income for leisure and travel pursuits throughout their working lives. Understanding Generation Z’s attitudes and preferences for different types of tourism experiences, as well as their beliefs and feelings about environmental sustainability, will assist with developing tourism experiences that will appeal to these consumers, and also with tailoring marketing campaigns designed to communicate the benefits of these experiences to relevant target markets.
Group Assignment task overview
Your task is to use the tourism data file/s provided and prepare a written research report presenting the results of your analysis and interpretation of the data. This assessment task reflects all course learning outcomes and is a very large project (50% of the course) and is due on Monday 4 October in week 11 .
As part of this project, you are required to prepare appropriate background research via a literature review for a feasible market research problem that is relevant to the data file you have been given. This part of the task will mean that you have to examine the survey instrument (questionnaire) and the type of data collected, and then do some research on tourism attitudes and preferences among male and female Generation Z tourists. You must use a variety of scholarly references including several journal articles (8 to 10 or more references) on relevant issues. [ Note: In a real life business situation, your survey instrument would be designed to collect data to achieve the market research objectives and answer the market research question.]
You will then need to formulate a clear market research question, research aim/s, and appropriate market research objectives (with associated hypotheses) which could be achieved by analysing the data contained in the data file. You should have 3 research objectives with appropriate hypotheses to test. Aim to have a total of 6 research hypotheses. For some research objectives, you may only need to test one or two hypotheses, for others you may need to test several research hypotheses, in order to achieve the particular research objective.
You will then be required to analyse the data in the data file in terms of your research objectives and hypotheses, in order to achieve your research aim/s and answer your overall market research question. The use of descriptive statistics and hypothesis tests in SPSS (i.e. independent samples t-test, correlation, cross-tabulation) will be necessary for the purpose of this research project. The use of graphs and tables to summarise and present your data in a professional manner is also advised in addition to an appropriate written description and interpretation of your results.
The research report should include a title page and the following sections: introduction (approx. 200 words), 2) literature review including research aim, objectives, and hypotheses (approx. 800 words), research methodology (approx. 300 words), results and discussion (approx. 800 words or more), and conclusion (approx. 200 words or more), and reference list (8-10 references or more; not included in the word count), and appendixes (if necessary, not included in word count). Tables and figures are not counted as words. The final document is 2500 words in length (+ or – 10% is ok).
Please note overall conclusions and identification of the implications of the research results will be necessary as well as a clear acknowledgement of the limitations of this research. The analysis, interpretation, conclusions and final report must be entirely your own work .
This is a group assignment (3-4 students in one group). It is expected that group members work together and contribute equally. You should note that it is worthwhile keeping a diary of your group activities just in case a dispute between group members arises (complaints regarding one group member not performing or contributing to the group work).
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