NO ABSTRAK : 58
Relationship Among Religious Affiliation, Attitude and Willingness to Pay Sacred Places Visit Tour
Putu Saroyini Piartrini.
University Udayana, Denpasar, Bali.
royetrini@gmail.com
ABSTRACT :
further development also presented to stimulate scientific dialogue among those who are interested in the research object as well as its topic.
Introduction.
Dating back of sacred places visit is pilgrimage, a journey searching moral or spiritual significance. Typically, it is a journey to visit a place or city which is important to a person belief and faith. Religions attach spiritual importance to particular places such as the place of birth or death of founders or saint, to the place of their connection with the divine, to locations where miracles were performed or witnessed, to locations where a deity is said to live , to any site that is seen to have special spiritual powers.
I Made Arsana Dwiputra one of The CRCS Student batch 2011 told that sacred places visit was not just a matter of visiting a place as a tourist . One of individual named Gede Sara Sastra said that even the Tirta Yatra India Tour is tourism activity. He visited holy places, not tourists sights. Tirta Yatra, which means ‘traveling in search of holy water, was activity to visit spiritual places aim at getting an unimaginable spiritual experience. Not only Hindus traveling to get spiritual experiences, those who were catholic also visited Lourdes in Franch and Moslems vitised Mecca to get similar experiences. Visiting sacred places was an morally important activities and received growing resources recently both for Hindu and Moslem. For Hindus visiting sacred place was not mandatory but it was different for Moslems. One of Fundamental belief of Islam is Visiting Mecca and becoming Great Hajj.
Tour providers offered a sacred places visit package tour in bundling price strategy either for Umrah or Tirta Yatra. The price range have been between Rp. 2.900.000,- - Rp. 4.300.000,- for inbound sacred places visit tours and for outbound sacred places visit tours the price range have been Rp. 19.000.000,- - Rp.32.000.000,- . Three of them popular sacred places destinations in Indonesia have been Gunung salak Temple which located in Bogor and Mount Bromo which is located in Probolinggo, East Java Province and Pura Mandara Giri Semeru Agung, in Lumajang, East Java. Balinese people also visited some sacred places which is located in India. They are places which have relationship with the Mahabharata or Ramayana characters such as Dwaraka city, Ganges river, Mathura city as well as Kuruksetra.
The number of tourist coming from India was increasing 36,38% in 2014 compared to that of 2013. The number of visitors coming from India in 2013 and 2014 were 64,578 and 88,074 respectively. Part of the reason behind the fact is culture similarity between India and Bali. As we all know, most of Balinese people faith in Hindu so does India where 940 million people reside in. it is important for us to identify what are the individual motivation to visit sacred places and is there any situation that moderated the decision to visit. The information would be fruitful to improve the effectiveness marketing strategy of sacred places package tour product in the future both in domestic market and foreign target market which has similar cultural background.
region or locale periodically such as Besakih Temple, Tanah Lot Temple, Uluwatu Temple, Rambut Siwi Temple and others. Today with increasing financial capacity there have been increasing number of Balinese who visiting some sacred places in India. There are some popular sacred places destinations. One of the popular destinations is Haridwar, located in the foothills of Himalayas, which is dedicated to Brahma, Wisnu and Ciwa. It is an eternal spiritual destination together with six sites as the top seven holy places in India. The second one is Kumbh Mela which is popular for its festival held in Haridwar once in 12 year, involved millions of people who come to bath in Ganges river to cleanse their sins. Tirupati Balaji is the third as one of the oldest temple. It is located on Tirupeti hill in the southern banks of Sri Swami Pushkarni River in the state of Andhra Pradesh. Vaishno Devi temple is also one of the oldest temples in India which is located on the holy Trikuta hills of the Shivalik Hill range. It is a place where we pray for Goddess 'Durga'. Millions of devotees from all over the country visit the temple for Vaishno Devi's blessings. The cave shrine of Vaishno Devi consists of three deities, Mahalakshmi, Mahakali and Mahasaraswati. It is believed that pilgrims who visit this deity seldom go back disappointed.
Let’s take a look at Mecca as one of World Destination visited by people coming from all over the world to accomplish religion belief. Similar to Hindu, Muslim people visit Mecca once in his or her lifetime. The pilgrimage to Mecca is one of the five pillar of Islam and it is a mandatory religious duty for Muslim that must be carried out at least once in their lifetime by all adult Muslims who are physically and financially capable of undertaking the journey, and can support their family during their absence. The gathering during the Hajj season is considered the largest annual gathering of people in the world. Medina Another is also important place for Muslims, the second holiest site in Islam, the final resting place of Muhammad in Al-Masjid al-Nabawi (Long, 2011). According Fuad Hasan Masyur, Chief of Association Hajj and Umrah Service Provider Indonesia (AMPHURI), In 2014 the number of Jemaah Umrah from Indonesia was 800.000 people. The number of Moslem people who interested in Umrah was increasing.
Terror Management Theory asserted that religion was created as a means for humans to cope with their own mortality and from which we learn that there is life after deat and simply being religious, it would reduce the effects of mortality salience on worldview defense. In the mortality salience, these threats are simply experimental reminders of one’s own death through exposure of death events or an object which has association with death such as making eyes contact with life insurance logo, attending cremation ritual, or watching TV broadcasting terrorist attack victims or air craft accident as well as asking participants to write about their own death.
target market. The objective of study is to identify relationship between Mortality Salience condition and attitude toward sacred places package tour as well as willingness to pay the package from Terror Management Theory (TMT) developed by Greenberg, Solomon and Pyszczynski, (1986). The contribution of the study was providing fruitful information in improving marketing practices of sacred places visit package tour and identify when would the target market more vulnerable to persuade so that marketing communication more effective to induce positive response from the target group (Kirchler,& Hoelzl, 2015).
Terror Management Theory and Response Individual toward Sacred Places Package Tour. Many people are more motivated by social pressures. Specifically for younger people, mortality salience was stronger in eliciting changes of one's behavior when it brought awareness to the immediate loss of social status or position, rather than a loss, such as death that one could not imagine and feels far off (Martin,Kamins,2010). There were some different factors to take into consideration, such as how strongly an individual feels toward a decision, their level of self-esteem, and the situation around them. TMT described that religions and cultures were symbolic systems that act to provide life with meaning and value (Solomon, Greenberg, Pyszczynski, 1991). It was created as a means to cope with their own mortality for human creature. We believe in life after death, and simply being religious, to reduce the effects of mortality salience. Mortality salience is the cognitive accessibility and process through which an individual considers the inevitability of their own death. Death thoughts accessibility had also been found to increase religious beliefs.
The mortality salience hypothesis (MS) of Terror Management Theory stated that if indeed one’s cultural worldview, or their self-esteem serves a death-denying function, then threatening these constructs should produce defenses aimed at restoring psychological equanimity such as returning the individual to a state of feeling invulnerable. Research findings show that reminding death activated worldview defense mechanism. Greenberg et al.(1990) reported that in high mortality condition participants were more favorably inclined toward others of the same religious beliefs. Nelson, Moore, Olivetti and Scott (1997) also found that in High Mortality salience condition participants more positive toward in group members than out group members as well as held more favorable perception toward domestic product than in normal condition. When mortality made salient foreign brand was less desirable (Nelson, Moore, Olivetti, & Scott,1997).
Religion is a major individual difference variable that received less attention. TMT researchers saw shared conception, that we know as culture as an essential and collective psychological defense that is necessary for anxiety prone creature to act adaptively. There is a relationship
among cultural factors, the terror inherent in human existence and self esteem (Greenberg et al., 1997). TMT posits that humankind used the same intellectual capacities that
cope with anxiety; it is a coping mechanism set in place to help control their terror, along with realizing that humans are animals just trying to manage the universe Self-esteem is a sense of personal value, that is obtained by believing in two things; The validity of one’s cultural worldview, and that one is living up to standards that are part of the worldview (Pyszczynski, Greenberg, Solomon, Arndt, Schimel, 2004). The relationship explained why individuals need, seek and strive to maintain and increase self esteem. Individual maintain self esteem by accomplishing culturally standard behavior. Consistent with Mortality Salience hypotheses, Attitude either Moslems or Hindus toward either Umrah or Torta Yatra package tour were predicted more positive in High Mortality Salience condition. Relationship between mortality salience condition and attitude toward Tirta Yatra and Umrah as the followings.
H1a: In High Mortality salience condition individual attitude (Moslem) toward Umrah package tour product was more positive than that in low mortality salience condition.
H1b: In High Mortality salience condition individual attitude (Hindus) toward Tirta Yatra package tour product was more positive than that in low mortality salience condition. Willingness to pay (WTP) is the maximum amount an individual is willing to sacrifice to procure a good or avoid something undesirable. The price of any goods transaction will thus be any point between a buyer's willingness to pay. Willingness to pay for sacred places package tour product was a proxy to perceived benefit of the product. Because in high mortality salience condition, the need to maintain self esteem was higher than in normal/low mortality salience condition, individuals would be strengthen their worldview by value more positive behavior that was prescribed by the religion or cultural. They were predicted willing to sacrifice more financial resource to consume the offering because the perceived value of the activities were higher than in normal condition. Mortality salience reported has effect on worldview affirmation strengthen support for local product that was indicated on higher willingness to pay for local product (Kirchler & Hoelzl, 2015) so that why when reminded their own mortality, individual tended to experience an elevated need to feel secure in their cultural worldview. The finding showed that following mortality salience induction , compared to failure salience, the world affirming prime uniquely increased willingness to pay higher prices for foreign product. H1a: In High Mortality salience condition willingness to pay (Moslem) for Umrah package tour
was higher than that in low mortality salience condition.
H1b: In High Mortality salience condition willingness to pay (Hindus) for Tirta Yatra package tour was higher than that in low mortality salience condition.
Experiment.
their involvement. The mean of participants age was 20 years old. They were informed that they would participated in consumer survey conducted in Bali for the year 2015.
After arrived at the class, participants asked to fill mortality salience induction questionnaire as it was used by Greenberg, J., Solomon, S., & Pyszczynski, T. (1997) and then they completed word puzzle form to distract puzzle to distract and to activate death thought following mortality salience manipulation. After completed world puzzle assignment respondents completed missing word form to check individual mortality salience. At the end of the first session they asked to report their emotion state. To make sure that induction didn’t stimulate negative affection state of individual then they were divided in two group, where the first group was those in high motality salience and the second one was those in low mortality salience. Fear of death questionnaire consisted of 12 statements to which they could respond with a yes or no answer such as : I am very afraid to die. Following the manipulation of mortality salience, participants completed short version of positive-negative affect scale (PANAS, Watson,Clark and Tellegen,1988).
Finally the participants completed form to express their attitude toward sacred places package tours product and filled some questions regarding at what price they would not buy the package tour products because they could afford them. Attitude was measured by multi dimension of product attributes such as how interesting was the package tour product; how was the value of the package tour offered to personal consumer ; how was the effect of the package tour on experience enrichment. Quality of the instruments were acceptable reflected on their validity and reliability parameters. Attitude instruments was good with total variance explained 63% and Cronbach alpha 77% while willingness to pay instrument validity was 58% and Cronbach Alpha was 73%.
Result.
There were no difference positive affect score between high mortality salience and low mortality salience condition, F= 0,06; p=0.78. the two group held positive affection both in high mortality salience condition and in low mortality salience condition. The result indicated that mortality salience induction was not resulted different emotion for both treatment group and control group.
Result indicated that in high mortality salience condition participants held more positive attitude and were willing to pay higher price for sacred places package tour than that in low mortality salience condition.
Discussion.
The result reported that target market held more favorable attitude toward sacred places package tour products in high mortality condition relatively compared to that in low mortality salience condition. Both those whose belief stated that visiting sacred places once a lifetime mandatory or not. According TMT individual responded positively to sacred places package tour products because the product was culturally prescribed to accomplish when they were able to do so. The response was a reflection of worldview bolstering behavior to attenuate death anxiety and to build psychological security and comfort because they were living up to standard. They also allocated more money for the product indicated that they value the activities more positive in high mortality salience condition than that in low mortality salience condition. The research findings uncovered valuable opportunity in high mortality salience condition because in this condition target market tend to respond favorably toward the product than in normal condition willing to pay higher than in normal condition because of the higher perceived value of the product.
Marketers were recommended to insert sacred places package tour ads after the television broadcasting the death news to exploit the effect of high mortality salience condition to improve marketing strategy and to close the transaction effectively. Beside of fruitful contribution to marketing practices in developing marketing strategy particularly regarding tourism destination, the study could be extend in the future. Researchers need to find out if gender plays significant role in relationship between mortality salience and attitude toward sacred places package tour products as well as between mortality salience and willingness to pay. The role of self esteem played in relationship between mortality salience and attitude toward sacred places package tour products also need to explore in the future to understand its potential impact on willingness to pay and intention to buy regarding religious tourism products.
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Table .1. THE BEST 20 DIRECT FOREIGN TOURIST ARRIVALS TO BALI IN JANUARY - DESEMBER 2014
NATIONALITY R 2013
SHARE
(%) R 2014
+/- (%)
SINGAPOREAN V 138,388 4.22 V 179,719 29.87 4.77 SOUTH KOREAN VI 134,452 4.10 VI 146,088 8.65 3.88 FRENCH VIII 125,247 3.82 VII 128,350 2.48 3.41 BRITISH IX 122,406 3.73 VIII 127,040 3.79 3.37 TAIWANESE VII 126,914 3.87 IX 114,504 -9.78 3.04
AMERICAN X 105,863 3.23 X 111,640 5.46 2.96
GERMAN XI 100,663 3.07 XI 105,471 4.78 2.80
INDIAN XIV 64,578 1.97 XII 88,074 36.38 2.34
DUTCH XIII 72,341 2.21 XIII 76,082 5.17 2.02
RUSSIAN XII 79,337 2.42 XIV 72,127 -9.09 1.91 NEW ZEALAND XV 48,749 1.49 XV 62,162 27.51 1.65 CANADIAN XVIII 33,508 1.02 XVI 37,523 11.98 1.00 HONGKONG XVI 37,412 1.14 XVII 35,538 -5.01 0.94 PHILIPINE XIX 30,031 0.92 XVIII 32,737 9.01 0.87
ITALIAN XX 29,106 0.89 XIX 30,713 5.52 0.82
THAI XVII 34,728 1.06 XX 30,247
-12.90 0.80
TOTAL 2,904,988 88.60 3,399,212 17.01 90.25
OTHER
NATIONALITIES 373,610 11.40 367,426 -1.66 9.75 TOTAL
ARRIVAL 3,278,598 100.00 3,766,638 14.89 100.00 Note: R = Ranking
