A qualidade da experiência e suas relações com a satisfação e a intenção de retorno: o caso do parque Beto Carrero World

Abstract

Understanding what drives a tourist's satisfaction is one of the most relevant areas of marketing research. In the tourism industry, satisfied tourists tend to repeat their visit because of their positive experience. The level of satisfaction of a visitor is the result of different factors. Thus, this study intends what factors explain the quality of the experience and its relations with the satisfaction and intention of return of the Beto Carrero World park visitors. In order to understand this process, the quality dimensions of the experience were identified as well as its interrelations between experiential quality, experiential value, experiential satisfaction, image of the theme park and intention to revisit perceived by the participants of the theme park. To do so, the research is considered descriptive and quantitative approach, through a survey adapted from the studies of Wu, Li and Li (2014) applied to students of higher, middle and technical education in the municipality of Santa Maria-RS and region. The data collection was performed in the period of August 2016, with 429 students of higher education, technical and average distributed among private colleges of Santa Maria and Cruz Alta, Polytechnic College of Santa Maria and University of Santa Maria-UFSM as well as UFSM-Palmeira das Missões. Data analysis included univariate, bivariate and multivariate techniques. In the initial model, of the ten existing dimensions, eight maintained all variables, however, the variable EQ1, FV1 and FV2 were excluded because they presented factorial loads less than 0.5. As a result, the present research presented 10 dimensions and 24 variables. Regarding the evaluation of the park's visitors, the dimensions of the research model were: EQ3- "visiting this theme park is a pleasant experience" with an average of 4.36 and TP2- "this theme park has a good reputation" With an average of 4.29. It was noticed that the age of the visitors is the factor that most influences the variables of the research model, in all ten variables were impacted. By means of the hypothesis test, the results highlight that the dimensions of experience, functional value and emotional value influence the satisfaction of the experience of the visitors of theme parks, as well as through the statistical results it was verified that the image perception Of the park and the satisfaction of the experience impact the intention of return of the visitors of the theme parks. Still, it is noted that the emotional value (R = 0.719) and the image perception of the park (R = 0.631) were the dimensions that most positively influenced the quality of the experience. However, it has been proven that the quality of the interaction does not positively impact the quality of the experience.