Decision support system for consumer behavior of Elderly Chinese tourists on healthy beverages

¹ Department of Industrial Business and Human Resource Development, Faculty of Business and Industrial Development, King Mongkut’s University of Technology North Bangkok, Thailand
² Advanced Industrial Engineering Management Systems Research Center, Department of Industrial Engineering, Faculty of Engineering, King Mongkut’s University of Technology North Bangkok, Thailand

^* Corresponding author: thanyathip.p@bid.kmutnb.ac.th

Abstract

Based on tourist expenditure, food and beverages are a crucial market and healthy beverages are a dominant product developed to serve customer needs. At present, elderly tourist groups emerge with purchasing power in the tourism industry and related businesses. However, market and academic research on healthy beverages still need further knowledge and only a few decision support models exist. The objectives of this research are (1) to investigate major influential factors of consumer behavior (CB) of elderly Chinese tourists on healthy beverages; and (2) to structure a decision support system for CB. The research methodology employs qualitative and quantitative approaches. In-depth interviews are conducted by including 120 experts with 410 survey samples collected from Chinese tourists. Content analysis and structural equation modelling (SEM) are employed to analyze the data, including the sensitivity analysis for testing model robustness. The results show that marketing stimuli affect CB and product innovation at a significant level of 0.05. On the other hand, product innovation slightly affects CB at a significant level. The sensitivity analysis reveals that decreasing price and trial usage are influential CB. Also, the increasing and decreasing of attitude, relative advantage, and compatibility affect CB. This research aims to design an applicable decision support system of CB for Chinese tourists, which can identify influential factors of CB on healthy beverages when an entrepreneur launches a new product and be a guideline for SMEs to assess customer satisfaction by responding directly to customer needs. Moreover, the DSS model can also enable sustainable development and engage the right business strategies that resonate with customer needs.