A new product design model: The Case of a carribean resort destination

The model developed in this study designs a new product based on a target market's responses to preference stimuli. The model is applied to a Caribbean resort destination. Previous research has indicated the perceptual dimensions subjects use to evaluate resort destinations might be classified as hotel related and environment attractiveness related.

Since there is more than one hotel at a resort destination, the model designs a product line of many different hotels. Hotels are defined by their attributes. A list of vacationers' most popular hotels is compiled and salient hotel attributes are photographed. A preference analysis of the photographs (attributes) is undertaken using an additive linear model. Utility weights of the attributes are then generated for individual respondents in a consumer sample. An iterative heuristic search is developed that allows each person in the sample to design a more satisfying hotel. The hotel is temporarily “built” if it attracts more consumers than an existing hotel. Hotels having fewer rooms than the potential demand are assumed to increase prices until supply and demand are in line. The number of rooms, potential demand and mean utility at each hotel is developed. Hotels that are unprofitable are eliminated and consumers not satisfied with a hotel are assumed to vacation else where. Elimination of unsatisfied vacationers has the effect of decreasing hotel and resort destination demand.

A land use plan is used to operationalize environmental attractiveness. Consumers' locate required infrastructure facilities relative to their most preferred hotel. Engineer appraisals are used to rate the relative suitability of each location at the resort destination site for every infrastructure facility. An aggregation of preferred facility location coordinates across subjects is used to define the most preferred facility location configuration. A model is developed to search unoccupied and occupied locations with the objective of moving facilities to maximal rated locations while maintaining a satisfactory correlation with the preferred facility location configuration. The configuration correlation measures consumer satisfaction with the new facility location configuration.