The Effect of Local Foods on Tourists’ Recommendations and Revisit Intentions: The Case in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam

Abstract

The study aims to investigate the recommendation and revisit intentions of foreign tourists in Ho Chi Minh city, Vietnam through their satisfaction with local foods. The study proposed the group of five attributes for food image: taste, health concern, price, serving style, vendor/ restaurant staffs. The relationship between these attributes of food image and food satisfaction, as well as the one between food satisfaction and behavioral intentions were investigated. To ensure a high ratio of answers, a face-to-face survey was conducted in famous places at Ho Chi Minh city. Data with 210 foreign tourists. The study uses the methods of descriptive statistics, EFA, Cronbach Alpha and regression. The results showed that Five attributes of food image were chosen for the research, being taste, health concern, price, serving style and vendors/ restaurant staffs. All of these attributes showed a positive relationship with satisfaction. Among five factors, taste had the most impact on food satisfaction. Through the analysis of several attributes of food images, this study provides managerial implications for tourism marketers in researching the positive influence of food image on tourists' satisfaction which leads to their positive word-of-mouth and return to the tourism place.

The Role of Food Image in Promoting Domestic Tourism

“…Satisfaction has a significant relationship as a mediating variable between food image and Response Behaviour. This result supported the studies by Nguyen et al (2019) and Zhong et al (2020) in their study on the effects of local foods on tourists' recommendation and revisit intention, influenced by satisfaction as a mediating variable.…”

“…The major strength of Ipoh, Perak's local food was found to centre by the tastiness "The local food in Ipoh is tasty" (T1), with the highest mean score (4.58). The highest coefficient in the regression analysis is consistent with the studies performed by Atikahambar et al (2018), Lertputtarak (2012) and Nguyen et al (2019). Tasting local food functioned as a primary motive and was influential in planning the tourists' trip.…”

“…The survey instrument consisted of five sections, including the screening questions (3 items), demographic information (4 items), food image (18 items), tourist satisfaction (6 items) and response behaviour (7 items). All the instruments were adapted from previous studies by Nguyen et al (2019) and Cheng et al (2018). Different measurement scales were utilised: the 7-points Likert scale for food image and satisfaction and the 5-points Likert scale for response behaviour as a remedy to prevent common method bias as recommended by Podsakoff et al (2003).…”

Factors Influencing Balanced Scorecard Application in Evaluating the Performance of Tourist Firms

“…In addition, a number of studies in Vietnam are also related to research topics such as Do (2011), Huynh (2017), Thuy Linh (2018) and Nguyen, Dang, and Ngo (2019).…”

The Hedonic Method in Evaluating Apartment Price: A Case of Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam

“…Reference price: The reference price of apartments in the same segment, area and ecological environment, etc., with completed transactions will have a great impact on the price of apartments targeted by the consumers. The price will influence customers' purchase intention (Nguyen, Bui, & Nguyen, 2019;Nguyen, Dang, & Ngo, 2019). According to Nguyen et al (2012), the higher the past transaction prices of the real estate under the same conditions, the higher the current transaction price will be and vice versa.…”