Tourist information search

Is it appropriate to segment the leisure tourism market on the basis of consumer information search behaviors? The present study examines this question by contrasting two approaches to segmenting this market: post hoc and a priori. Using behavioral data collected in a survey of 585 auto travelers to Florida, analyses demonstrated that information search behavior is meaningfully related to systematic tourism behavior; information search and tourism context are the result of a number of situational, tourist, and marketplace contingencies; information search is associated with managerially-relevant tourism outcomes; and an a priori operationalization of information search is a more appropriate approach to segmentation on a number of criteria. (C) 1997 Elsevier Science Ltd.