Proceedings of Annual Tokyo Business Research Conference
9 -10 November 2015, Shinjuku Washington Hotel, Tokyo, Japan
ISBN: 978-1-922069-88-7
Concept Based Value Creation in Wellness Tourism:
Perception of Nature vs Natural
Malliga Marimuthu*, Siti Rohaida Mohamed Zainal and Hui Wen
(Stephanie) Chuah
In the tourism industry, the creation and transmission of value for customers has been
hailed as the next source of competitive advantage (Eid and El-Gohary, 2014; Gallarza
and Gil, 2008), and has been argued to be the most important driver of customer
satisfaction and behavioural intentions (Chen and Chen, 2010; Eid, 2013).
Concomitantly, the customer value creation is considered as one of the cornerstones for
the growth of wellness tourism. Wellness tourism refers to travel for the purpose of
promoting health and well-being by visiting selected wellness providers such as beauty
spa, lifestyle resort, or spiritual retreat (Voigt et al., 2011). Although wellness tourism has
emerged and grown with the “travel to feel well” trend (Lehto et al, 2006), however,
conceptualizations of customer value, and understandings of how value is created and
evaluated in this promising niche market remains under-researched. There is a lack of
investigation regarding the effect of specific concept on the formation of perceived value
which later drives consumers’ satisfaction in this area. Therefore in this paper, the
researcher proposes a research model to examine the effect of nature vs natural
concepts on perceived value in the context of wellness tourism. Perceived value is
regarded as an outcome construct that results from trade-off between the benefits and
barriers of consuming wellness services. Through an extensive literature review, we
identify seven benefit (transcendence, physical health and appearance, escape and
relaxation, epistemic, social, indulgence, and emotional) and three barrier (interpersonal,
intrapersonal, and structural) attributes. While the perceived benefits are expected to
affect the value perceptions positively, the perceived barriers are expected to affect the
value perceptions negatively, perceived value will, in turn, determine consumers’
purchase decision. The measurement instrument of consumer perceived value
developed in this study provides insights into the benefit and barrier factors that influence
consumers’ value perceptions within a specific concept which refers to creating sense of
nature vs natural as driver of value creation in this business. From a theoretical
perspective, the paper extends on prior research of perceived value through introduction
of a specific concept to describe value creation and evaluation process. It may also help
managers to understand how specific concept can be used to support value creation and
assist them to develop superior concept based value strategies.
______________________________________________________________________________
*Malliga Marimuthu, B.A (Hons), M.A, MBA, PhD (Corresponding author)
Senior Lecturer, Department of Marketing, School of Management, Universiti Sains Malaysia
Penang 11800, Malaysia, Ph:+604 6532332, Fax:+6046577448, Email: malliga@usm.my;
malligausm@gmail.com
Siti Rohaida Mohamed Zainal, Universiti Sains Malaysia, Malaysia
Hui Wen (Stephanie) Chuah, Universiti Sains Malaysia, Malaysia
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Proceedings of Annual Tokyo Business Research Conference
9 -10 November 2015, Shinjuku Washington Hotel, Tokyo, Japan
ISBN: 978-1-922069-88-7
Acknowledgements
The authors would like to thank Universiti Sains Malaysia for providing funding for this study
under grant no: 1001/PMGT/816261.
References
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Eid, R. (2013), “Integrating Muslim customer perceived value, satisfaction, loyalty and retention
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Lehto, X. Y., Brown, S., Chen, Y., and Morrison, A. M. (2006), “Yoga tourism as a niche within
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