Tourists' preferences of souvenir design based on expressive attributes: a cross-cultural perspective

This study investigates the expressive design attributes of souvenir design preferred by tourists by comparing and contrasting preferences and perceptions of tourists from two different cultural groups. The study used a conjoint design to allow respondents to rank their preferences of sampled souvenirs which represents various expressive design attributes of souvenirs. This study uses conjoint analysis to test the relationship between those expressive attributes and tourists’ perceived value and purchase intention. The results showed that the three expressive attributes, namely Makers’ Mark attribute, Iconofetish attribute, and Relational attribute impact American and Chinese tourists perceived values of souvenirs and purchase intentions. The part-worth utility score indicates that comparatively speaking, American tourists prefer souvenirs with a dominant makers’ mark and those that are connected to the local place or local people. On the other hand, Chinese tourists prefer souvenirs with a domestic iconofetish feature. This study highlights the relationship between the four perceived value – perceived functional value, perceived emotional value, perceived social value, and perceived novelty value – and the purchase intention, using Spearman’s correlation. These results contribute to the literature of souvenir design. The culturally based preferences between the US and Chinese tourists allow designers and retailers to create and design souvenirs based on their preferred expressive attributes.