Suavi Ahipasaoglou[1], Erdem Korkmaz[2]

ABSTRACT

Recently, it’s observed that demand on alternative tourism types are growing. Wine tourism, one of the alternative tourism types, spesifically gained importance in the 1990’s. Wines that made in different countries from different types of grapes are among the reasons to visit that place for the wine tourists. Besides, tourists visiting vineyards, wineries and wine festivals at the well-known wine reigons with organized tours or alone. Scarcely, determining the perceptions of wine tourists about service quality is important for wineries. In this study, wine tourists’ perceptions about service quality for wine tasting is determined with the SERVQUAL scale. Research carried at Capadoccia region ended with 296 valid questionnaire forms. By analyzing the data t-test, chi-square, Mann-Whitney U and Kruskal Wallis are utilized. After analyzing the data there is no significant difference revealed between the tourists perceptions about service quality and wine tasting experience. Besides, it’s determined that some relations and differences between the tourists demographic variables and service quality perceptions. Within this research results, an important contribution is made not also to the related literature but also to the wine tourism sector.

Keywords: Wine tourism, service quality, Capadoccia, Turkey.

INTRODUCTION

Human beings always wonder about the world they live in. Many want to learn more about other people, cultures, animals, plants and geographical forms. Nowadays, due to the fact that the education level has increased and the fact that the ways and chances of communication are increasingly developing, people could also inform themselves much better about the whole world and also widen the information they already had. It is literally a “global” world we are living in. People are mobile and are always traveling in this global world we always talk about. People may travel due to many different reasons. However, it is not an ignorable fact that many are traveling in the tourism sector. According to the statistics of the WTO for 2006, 842 million tourists have taken part in the global tourism mobilization and were registered in the international tourism sector. (http://www.unwto.org/facts/eng/pdf/barometer/ barometer_february_07_e.pdf). It is also a fact that the tourism movements do change according to the common practiced mentality at that certain period of time. Even though the mass tourism makes the huge portion of the whole tourism industry, the interest for the alternative tourism as well as the individual tourism is increasing day by day. One of the new sectors in the tourism industry is the “Wine Tourism”. Even though the roots of this new tourism sector fall back to earlier times, it got started professionally during the 1990s.

Many different regions of the world are producing many different tastes of wines. The curiosity to experience more is one of the instinctive reasons why people to take part in the tourism and travel as well as why different wine experiences take place. The resources about the wine tourism is mainly from the countries which produce, export and consume wine at the peak levels such as USA, France, Italy, Canada, New Zealand, Australia. Additionally one also comes across with such resources in Chile, Israel and South Africa. Turkey on the other hand, is one of the most important grape producers of the whole world, but is lacking resources about the wine production and about the wine tourism totally. This is why this study on these subjects is entitled to be only successful, leading and unique.

WINE TOURISM

First records about the wine tourism are indicating France as the country of origin. In 1855 the French managers have developed the system of dividing France geographically and giving names to their wines accordingly in order to be undertaking better quality controls all over the country. This system was developed after the recommendation of the Syndicate of Bordeaux Wine Brokers. As they started practicing this system, the Bordeaux wine was clearly differentiated from the other wines. Additionally new wine cellars in form of big chateaus were started to be built (Hall et. al., 2000). The fact that these wine cellars were selling the wine they produce, is considered to be the first steps of wine tourism.

Different definitions were recommended in order to define the wine tourism. According to Getz, an important number of definitions about the wine tourism depend on the touristic visits. According to Getz,: “The wine tourism depends on the attractively of the producing wine cellars and the wine regions, niche marketing and the system of destination development; which is very advantageous to the wine industry in terms of selling and marketing”. (2000). One may say that Getz has the view of consumer behavior. The accepted wine tourism definition is: “Visitation to vineyards, wineries, wine festivals and wine shows for which grape wine tasting and/or experiencing the attributes of grape wine region are the prime motivating factors for visitors” (Hall, Sharples, Cambourne and Macionis, 2000). This is a definition which evaluates the wine tourism from the consumers visit aspect and the reasons for this visit. Even though this definition cannot specify the characteristics of the tourist, they are also used in many studies because it is considered to be the most detailed definition ever. The motives of traveling to the wine regions are visiting producing wine-cellars, taking a look in the environment and the nature, taking part in the festivals, visiting other attractions, socializing, visiting relatives and friends. (Reid, 1990; Maddern and Golledge, 1996).

Researches about the wine tourism have developed themselves by the time in their structure and in their quality. A general investigation in to the literature is enough to see that the studies done so far by the regions and by the countries are only at the level of general evaluations. The most important of these studies are: Australia (Macionis, 1997; Dowling and Carlsen, 1999), Canada (Hackett, 1998; Telfer, 2001; Williams and Kelly, 2001; Williams and Dosa, 2003; Hashimoto and Telfer, 2003), Chile (Sharples, 2002), France (Frochot, 2000), Hungary (Szivas, 1999), New Zealand (Beverland, 1998; Johnson, 1998; Mitchel and Hall, 2003), Spain (Gilbert, 1992), South Africa (Preston-Whyte, 2000; Bruwer, 2003; Demhardt, 2003), USA (Dodd, 1995; Peters, 1997; Skinner, 2000) and England (Howley and van Westering, 2000). An evaluation into these studies show that the wine tourism in these countries are high developed.

SITUATION IN TURKEY

According to the historical information, the grape production has started 7000 years ago in Anatolian and had an important impact on the development of Turkish culture over the years. During centuries Anatolia was the center of wine production. Wine was used in religious precessions or as medical treatments. Later on this customs was not practiced because the wine was considered as a western habit. Therefore the wine production was held at the minimum. (Ergenekon, 2004)

Wine grapes and the wine culture were introduced by the Phoenicians 5000-2000 BC on the Aegean Coast. In the ancient times the wine culture has reached its peak. Homeros (800 BC) was talking about his affiliation to the Anatolian and Greek wines in the Iliad and Odyssey legends (Aktan and Kalkan, 2000). Wine became by the time the most important drink for the Greeks and the Romans.

The Christian and the Jewish minorities could only produced under controls and under limited amounts until the Muslims received the permission to produce wine during the Ottoman Empire times. As the taxes were playing an important role in the income of the Ottoman Empire, it is not surprising to learn that the laws were kept “flexible” from time to time. There is not doubt that the wine production was at the minimum as the wine was forbidden. However, as the laws were getting “flexible” the wine fields were kept and were given to the non-Muslim minorities for the wine production. Therefore the production level was showing an increase (Özay, Akyol and Azabağaoğlu, 2005).

By the foundation of the Republic, it was no longer forbidden to produce wine and it was actually accepted that alcohol brings regular income. As the Turkish Monopoly, Tekel, was established, it was also a very acceptable occupation for the Muslims to produce wine (Aktan and Kalkan, 2000). The first wine factory was established in Tekirdağ in the year of 1931. İzmir (1935), Tokat, Ürgüp, Gaziantep and Ankara (1943)followed respectively. In 1962 wine and cognac production started in Çanakkale (the region of Troia) and continued in Şarköy and Uçmakdere (1966), Şanlıurfa (1970), Hoşköy (1971), Kırcasalih (1973) and Bor (1974). New wine production factories are still opening. (Özay, Akyol and Azabağaoğlu, 2005). All these factories supply their wine from the wine producers. There is, however, a rising trend that the factories grow as well their own grapes and try to make quality wines through that, as grapes are used in many other sectors besides the wine production. (Ergenekon, 2004). This is an important step for the wine sector, because it would be much easier for the factories to produce quality wine.

SERVICE QUALITY CONCEPT

One can say that service is an unavoidable result of people living together. Should we define it this way, then we come across with the fact that the service quality was existing for a long time ago. However, there is a trend to find a better technical definition for the service quality (Erkut, 1995). Grönross (1990) defines the service as “An activity or a group of activities that takes place as a reply to the customer problems, which has-even though not obligatory–but naturally untouchable structure, which occurs between the customer and the service personal and/or the server over their physical resources, goods and/or systems”. According to Kotler and Armstrong (1997) however, the service is “an activity or an advantage offered by one party to the other, which does not end with the ownership of anything”. There are a number of characteristics that make the difference between the service and the physical goods. According to these differences the physical differences, one cannot touch the services, cannot have any types of the same service, cannot produce and consume them at the same time – on the contrary to the physical goods. It is just a facility or a period of time, consisting of main values which occur during the communication of the seller and buyer and whose production cycle the consumer also takes place. Services cannot be stocked and cannot be transferred (Grönroos, 1990). Services usually occur according to the performances of the human beings. Even though the visitors who are taking part in the wine tourism by tasting and seeing a concrete product, they need to be serves so that the wine tourism can exist. Therefore, it is possible to group the wine tourism into the services.

According to the researches done in the service quality literature, there are two basic approaches as: customer-based and value-based. Should one is for the approach based on the value, then he or she is also for the highest quality, perfection and for certain standards. One of the earliest theorists to consider quality in terms of excellence was Peters (1987). Wyckoff (1992) also defined service quality by suggesting that it is the degree of excellence intended that meets customer requirements. This is recognized by the practitioner panels of the quality awards schemes, such as European Quality Award as being a valid approach (Williams and Buswell, 2003). The customer based approach, which is also known as customer-oriented quality, defends that the customers are central not only to the organization but also to all aspects of the operational procedures. Customer needs are paramount to the continuous improvement of a service, a factor that, if ignored by the tourism and leisure industry, could see customers moving to an organization’s competitors (Williams and Buswell, 47). This is not a new approach and was developed before by Brown and Swartz (1989), Zeithaml et. al., (1990), Bitner and Hubbet (1994) and Becker (1996). It is an important step to be able to meet the customer needs. By doing so, modifications and amendments in order to get the service quality level to the required point will be easy.

THE DIMENSIONS OF THE SERVICE QUALITY

There are different approaches and opinions about the definition of the service quality. The first developed systematic studies about the service quality model were performed by Sasser, Olsen and Wyckoff; Lehtinen and Lehtinen and Normann. In addition to these studies the study of the Scandinavian school Grönross and the SERVQUAL developed by the American school Parasuraman, Zeithaml and Berry are also non-ignorable important. A lot of interest were shown to the models of Grönross and the SERVQUAL. According to Grönross the services consist of technical (process) and functional dimension (result). Technical dimension is the perception of the customers after the service they purchased. Production on the other hand is the result reached by the customer after the changes between the buyer and the seller is finished. Customers may define this dimension in an objective way due to the technical characteristics they have. The second dimension consists of the service that takes place and the interaction between the buyer and the seller.

The service quality is made of the perception of these two dimensions by the customers. (Grönroos, 1984). The SERVQUAL model created by Parasuraman, Zeithaml and Berry consists at the first stage of tangibles, reliability, responsiveness, competence, courtesy, credibility, security, access, communication and understanding the customer (Parasuraman, Zeithaml and Berry, 1985). However, due to the fact that some of these ten terms are very similar to each other, they were decreased to five. By doing so, tangibles, reliability and responsiveness were kept. Competence, courtesy and credibility were grouped under assurance and access, communication and understanding the customer were grouped under empathy (Zeithaml and Bitner, 2000). Tangibles are made up of physical possibilities and the appearance of the employees as well as of communication material. Reliability means being able to provide the promised service truly. Responsiveness is the will to help customers and to give the right service. Assurance is the knowledge of the personnel, their politeness and ability to make the customers feel secure. Empathy is serving the customers individually. The researchers have found out 22 suggestions in order to define the customer expectations and perception. (Parasuraman, Zeithaml and Berry, 1988).

In the following years, many other researches were done by using the SERVQUAL scale. In these researches the scale was applied in different fields. Some of these fields are: Tyre retailing (Carman, 1990), dental services (Carman, 1990), hotels and the travel agencies (Saleh and Ryan, 1992; Fick and Ritchie, 1991; Johns, 1993), car servicing (Bouman and van der Wiele, 1992), business schools (Rigotti and Pitt, 1992), higher education (Ford et. al., 1993; McElwee and Redman, 1993), accounting firms (Freeman and Dart, 1993), architectural services (Baker and Lamb, 1993), recreational services (Taylor et. al., 1993), hospitals (Babakus and Mangold, 1992; Mangold and Babakus, 1991; Reidenbach and Sandifer-Smallwood, 1990; Soliman, 1992; Vandamme and Leunis, 1993; Walbridge and Delene, 1993), airlines catering (Babakus et. al., 1993), banking (Kwon and Lee, 1994; Wong and Perry, 1991) and local government (Scott and Shieff, 1993). By the evaluations of the tourism establishment, it was seen that the SERVQUAL model was basically used in different characteristic of the establishments. For example Raajpoot (2002) has developed the TANGSERV model and researched about the service quality of the food and beverage establishments in terms tangibles. Khan (2003) has found the ECOSERV scale in order to evaluate in the eco-tourism sector. Frochot and Hughes (2001) have developed HISTOQUAL scale in order to evaluate the usage of the historical constructions in the tourism sector. Knutson et. al., (1990) found the LODGSERV scale for the accommodation establishments and Stevens et. al. (1995) found the DINESERV scale for the food and beverage services.

Quality is a complex and undefined area for the service establishments to be understood, practiced and controlled. As services are rather performances then objects, it is difficult for the establishments to create “define production characteristics” for the quality. The service quality cannot be made in a production circumstance and to deliver it completely to the customer. Especially in the services where high efforts need to be spend, the service performance may vary day by day and also according to the servers and the customers. In many services the quality is already reached as the service is given and as a certain interaction between the server and the customer has taken place. Therefore, the service quality depends mostly on the performance of the personal, and the personal is an organizational resource, which are as uncontrollable as the inputs of a physical good (Zeithaml, Berry and Parasuraman, 1988). As a matter of fact, we need to concentrate on the attitudes and the attributes of the personal that are serving, during his/her one-to-one relation with the customer, when we talk about the service quality. This is the reason why ten of 22 suggestions of SERVQUAL and SERVPERF scales are about the personal.

As the dimensions and the importance of the service sector rises day by day, the service quality has gained in importance at the same time. The establishments need to define the quality of their services as a report on the provided services. By doing so, a new direction may be given to the services after evaluating the positive and the negative sides of the services. At this point, we can underline that the comprehension of the customers is a good way of evaluating the service quality. Due to the importance of this subject, the customer comprehensions are also defined in this research according to the services of the producing wine-cellars.

THE IMPORTANCE AND THE AIM OF THE RESEARCH

It is an important factor for the development of the practices of wine tourism that the wine and the tourism industries have a close relationship in terms of inputs and outputs. In countries where the wine culture is developed, such as France, Italy, Spain, USA and Australia, the wine sector is also gaining in importance. Unfortunately Turkey is not using its potential neither in wine consumption, nor in wine sales or in wine tourism even though there is a high number of grape fields and a large variety of grape sorts in the country. Due to the fact that the wine tourism is grouped under the service industry because of its structure, the same circumstances that are applicable for the service industry are also applicable for the wine tourism. This is why the importance of the properties and the quality of the service is underlined. As already known, the customers are evaluating the service quality in establishments where the service quality is produced; so that they can see how far and in how many aspects they can fulfill the customer needs. This would make it easier for them to plan their services so that the customer would compensate easily and so that the customers would be satisfied.

The main reason of these researches, which aim to increase the interest in this sector, is that the customers, who are taking part in this wine tourism, should help us in defining the service quality. At this point, it’s also tried to find out what effect it would have to have a customer defining the service quality, even though this specific customer have joined tasting wine before. Some demographic factors are also been taken into consideration such as age, gender, nationality and the education level, in order to see the relationships and the differences of their perceptions.

SAMPLE

The research has taken place in Cappadocia between 28^th of July and the 5^th of August. 350 questionnaires in various languages have been prepared, and 299 of them returned back to us filled. 3 of these returned questionnaires were not applicable, therefore there were 296 valid forms in the hand. It can be concluded that the return ratio is 84%. This was an acceptable ratio, so the analysis got started. As the volume of the universe was not known for sure, the n = t²pq/d² formula was applied. (Yazıcıoğlu and Erdoğan, 2004). On the base of α = 0.05, the found values according to the t chart was 1.96. The repetitions frequency was taken as %20. The value of p is then 0.20. The repetition frequency is called as q and is calculated as 1-q; therefore as 0.80. The results are considered to be 0.95 % reliability and therefore d is 0.05. Therefore the size of the sample is:

(1.96)² x 0.20 x 0.80/(0.05)² = 256

The size of the sample must be, according to this formula, 256. As 296 questionnaires were returned in the research, we can say that the samples are equal to the principal mass.

Sampling technique was the simple random sampling. This is about choosing different and independent samples of n volume from the whole N universe. This means that samples are chosen randomly from the universe without dividing the principal mass into groups. (Serper, 2000). The tourists have the chance then to be chosen equally.

METHODOLOGY

Questionnaire technique is being used in this research for data gathering. Wine cellars were visited one by one and the tourists inside these cellars were made to fill in the forms. After the period of gathering data, the data are being analyzed b using the percentage and the frequency analysis. For this purpose demographic data are analyzed. At a later stage the research hypothesis are being tested. During the analysis the SPSS 15.0 for Windows software is being used. The main hypothesis of the research can be called as: “There are no differences / there are differences between the customers’ perceptions of service quality who have experienced wine tourism before and the customers who have not”.

The five defined dimensions that are ruling the service quality according to the main hypothesis of the research, are formed as related to the wine tourism which has been experienced before. The formed hypotheses are H₀/H₁, H₀/H₂, H₀/H₃, H₀/H₄ and H₀/H₅ according to the service quality dimensions. “There are no differences / there are differences between the customers’ perceptions about tangibles, reliability, responsiveness, assurance and the empathy dimensions of service quality who have experienced wine tourism before and the customer who have not”. During the testing of these parameters the Mann-Whitney U test is being used, which is the most powerful non-parametric test ever. This is the reason why particularly this test is being used frequently. This test is utilized to determine if the two independent samples are actually from the universe. Should they be originating from the same universe, then the variation of x_i and y_i values are to be similar (Canküyer and Aşan, 2001). The significance level of this test is defined as α = 0.05.

The secondary hypotheses are also being defined and evaluating from the main hypothesis. In these hypotheses, it has been tasted if there are any relation between the demographic characteristics such as age, gender, nationality and the education level and the perception of the service quality. The formed hypotheses are H₀/H₆, H₀/H₇, H₀/H₈, H₀/H₉ and H₀/H₁₀ according to the service quality dimensions. “There are no differences / there are differences between the customer’s age, gender, nationality and education level and their perceptions about service quality”. During the testing the chi-square independent test is being used, which tests the independency of the X and Y variables (Özdamar, 2004). This is the reason why the ki-square test is being used in these researches. The significance level of this test is defined as α = 0.05.

The chi-square test, which is used to measure the secondary hypotheses in the research, gives the relation between the demographic variables and the perceptions of the service quality. In order to explain better which variable effects the perception of the service quality, its needed to do variance analysis. However, when evaluating the data belonging to the variables of age, gender, nationality and the educational level, we reach values which are n<30, so it is much better to utilize non parametric tests. For this reason it’s preferred to utilize the Kruskal-Wallis Test as there were three different groups in the age variables. The Kruskal-Wallis Test is also known as the one-way variance analysis. By performing this test, two or more groups can be compared to each other (Yazıcıoğlu and Erdoğan, 2004). This test is also called as “The variance analysis according to the ranking numbers”, as queue numbers were given” (Canküyer and Aşan, 2001). The significance level of this test is defined as α ≤ 0.05. The differences between the perception of the service quality and the gender are measured by one of the parametric statistical tests called “t-test”. For utilizing this test, the data need to be measured at least with gaps. Two samples are chosen here form the universe need to be independent from each other. According to the fact that these two groups having different variances or not, the t values are to be calculated (Altunışık et. al., 2004). The significance level of this test is defined as α ≤ 0.05.

THE QUESTIONNAIRE FORM

The dimensions related to the service quality as mentioned in the SERVQUAL are applied in the wine tasting experiences. There were two parts of the form. In the first part there were 23 suggestions used for determining the perceptions of the tourists about service quality. 22 of these 23 suggestions are about the wine tasting and the last one is a question about the possibility to take part in wine tasting again. The answer alternatives were used in 5 different scales, in order to evaluate the perceptions of the tourists better from “Strongly Agree” and “Strongly Disagree”, which is also called the Likert Scale. Nine of these suggestions were negative expressions. By analyzing these data, the inverse analyzing system is being used. At the other part of the form there are general information and questions about demographical information. There are questions about the age, gender, nationality and the educational level about the customers. This general information received about the tourists were used to make a general profile about the tourists and to test the hypotheses which are presented before. There is also a question in this part in order to identify if the tourist have taken part in wine tasting before. By doing so, the main hypothesis of this research is also being tested.

Table-1 Distribution of Participants Demographic Data According to Percentage and Frequency

To define the reliability level of the questionnaire used in this research, the cronbach alpha coefficient is calculated as 0.78. For reliability the ratio of 0.60 ≤ α < 0.80 is accepted (Özdamar, 2004). According to this, the ratio is also reliable.

EVALUATING THE DATA

At the end of this research, the demographical data of the tourist who have taken part in this research have been investigated; and afterwards the relation between the effect of wine tasting experience to the service quality dimensions and the relation between the demographic variables and the perception of the service quality have been investigated. Demographic data of the participants is shown on Table-1.

According to data, 54.1 % of the participants are between 35-64 years old and 44.9 % are between 15-34 years old. There are also participants over 65 %, who are making only 1%of the whole participants. We may say that, almost all of the participants are among the young and adult tourists. Evaluating the participants according to their gender we have: 36.8 % female, and 63.2 % male. Therefore, it may be concluded that males prefer more wine tasting compared with the females. Having a look at the nationality of the tourist we have: 59.5 % Turkish, 10.8 % Spanish, 7.8 % British and 6.8 % Italian Citizens as well as 6.6 % citizens of other countries such as Poland, Japan, Korea, France, Canada, Australia and Hungary. These countries were grouped under “other countries” as their each percentage was too low to make a healthy presentation then the other nationalities. One surprising result of this research is the high number of Turkish participants. Therefore the expectations of the Turkish participants need to be identified and at a later stage as well fulfilled. According to the data the 70 % of the participants were university graduates. Therefore it can be concluded that wine is mainly preferred by the persons who are university graduates.

It has been observed that the 70.6 % of the participants have already tasted wine before. Therefore it can be concluded that the participants are already experienced in this matter and evaluate the dimensions of the service quality according to their experience. As a result the experience about the wine tasting has a great importance in evaluating the service quality in the right way and manner.

Table-2 Distribution of Tourists According to Wine Tasting Experience Before

72.6% of the participants mentioned that they would like to take part in wine testing again soon. This is a clear indication for the satisfied customers that are pleased of their experience and who are willing to repeat it again.

Table-3 Distribution of Tourists According to Participate Wine Tasting Again

The Mann-Whitney U test has been used in the testing of the main hypothesis. The results of this test are shown in Table-4.

Table-4 The Perception of Service Quality of the Tourists Depending On Their Wine Tasting Experiences

*p ≤ α = 0.05

According to the Mann-Whitney U test result shown in Table-4 all of the values are more then 0.05 for the significance level of α = 0.05. Therefore only H₀ hypothesis is being accepted as H₁, H₂, H₃, H₄ and H₅ hypotheses are being rejected. In other words, there are no differences between the perceptions of the participants who have experienced the wine tasting before and the participants who did not. This results show that these two different groups of tourists have similar perceptions.

According to the test results, about the age of the tourists it has been analyzed that the questions 6, 7 and 8 about the reliability and the question number 10 about the responsiveness dimension have absolute no effect on the perception of the service quality. In other words, the age variable does not have an effect on the behavior of the wine producer towards the tourists, in case of any occurring problems and on the fact that the customer information are kept recorded in the wine producer. Therefore, the questions mentioned above for the service quality and the reliability and responsiveness dimensions, the hypothesis of H₀ is being accepted and the H₆ hypothesis is being rejected. For the other questions and other dimensions of the service quality, meaningful relations have been found out by the age of the tourists and service quality, the H₆ is being accepted and the hypothesis H₀ is being rejected.