PhD Topic

Tourism and Shopping: Understanding Chinese Tourists’ Shopping Behaviors in Australia

China has become the world’s largest tourism source market, and at the same time, leaped to the top spender on international tourism (UNWTO, 2013). Chinese outbound tourists, for whom shopping is a highly important activity, are becoming well known for their shopping power and their enthusiasm for expensive high-end products (Xu and McGehee, 2012). However, extant literature on this group’s shopping behaviors is still sparse. This research, combining qualitative and quantitative methods, aims to obtain an insightful understanding of Chinese tourists’ shopping behaviors in Australia, and further explore tourists’ shopping behaviors mechanism from a cross-cultural perspective. Findings of this study will theoretically help to understand the dynamics of tourist shopping phenomenon, and also practically contribute to effective marketing and management decision-making for the destination and related businesses.

Supervisors:

Primary advisor: Professor Gianna Moscardo

Secondary advisor: Associate Professor Laurie Murphy

Funding

PhD Scholarship from China Scholarship Council (2014-2018)