邮轮属性评价与品牌定位

以全球最大的邮轮点评网站——邮轮评论家为数据来源渠道，以编辑（Editor/Expert）的文本点评以及对167艘邮轮10大属性的打分数据为样本，利用词频分析、回归分析、聚类分析和方差分析等方法，对全球21个邮轮品牌的产品属性、总体评价以及品牌定位问题进行了系统研究。结果表明，对于专业型游客来说，餐饮、客房和娱乐是关注度最高的船上属性，服务、性价比和公共空间是满意度最高的船上属性，客房、餐饮、公共空间、性价比和娱乐属性对邮轮总评具有显著影响。方差分析表明，与行业界定下的品牌行为相比，基于专业型游客感知的品牌划分更有效。

Cruise Attribute Evaluation and Brand Positioning: An Empirical Study on Professional Cruisers

EWOM has become an important source of product information influencing people’s purchase decisions, especially for service, where consumption uncertainty and risk are greater than for goods. For cruise tourism, eWOM tools have become key sources of information for cruise passengers in choosing cruise companies, ships, and destinations. As such, it is critical for cruise lines to understand online WOM generated by both cruisers and experts to market brands effectively to the right consumers. According to Motivation Theory and Attribute Knowledge Theory, consumers and experts will value attributes differently based on their motivations and product-related knowledge. Extant studies related to cruise eWOM are largely based on cruiser-generated contents, few are using expert perceptions. Based on text reviews and ratings of 10 ship attributes from editors of the world’s largest online cruise community (httpw://ww.cruisecritic.com), this article evaluates 167 cruise ships from 21 cruise brands. Firstly, we use the method of word frequency to analyze the text reviews of 167 ships. By extracting high frequency words related to cruise attribute, we identify attributes that are paid high attention by experts. Then, combined with satisfaction evaluation of experts on 10 attributes of 167 ships, this paper discusses the product attributes that need to be improved in the international cruise industry in terms of attention and satisfaction. Secondly, taking the overall rating as dependent variable and 10 cruise attributes as independent variables, the factors influencing experts’ overall cruise ship ratings are identified by multiple regression analysis. Finally, we use 10 cruise attributes as categorical variables to divide 21 cruise brands by cluster analysis, and the differences between three categorizations defined by experts, defined by industry and defined by self-brand are further explored. Results show that core attributes such as cabin, dining and entertainment not only occupy the highest attention to experts’ reviews, but also become the most influential factors on the overall ship evaluations. However, relatively low evaluations by experts indicate they are critical areas for cruise companies to improve upon with urgency. The brand categorization derived from expert perception is mostly in line with that defined by industry, but notable differences in the two types of brand categorizations are also identified. Variance analysis further shows that the expert-derived cruise brand categorization is more informative than that defined by industry. The main contribution of this research is a clarified understanding of the reviews conveyed by expert, which offers insights for third-party opinion platforms and cruise practitioners in optimizing brand positioning and improving information value of online word-of-mouth.