ANALYSIS OF POPULATION INCOME AS A FACTOR OF FORMATION OF TOURIST FLOWS

Abstract

The article is devoted to the use of various indicators of income in order to determine the main peculiarities and capacity of the consumer market of tourism services within one country and in a group of countries combined on the basis of pre-selected criteria, to further detail the strategy of entering target markets. The relevance of the study is explained by the fact that despite a thorough analysis of motivating factors for the purchase of tourist services and socio-psychological aspects of consumer behaviour depending on the level of population income, the question of delimitation of functions and content of typical macroeconomic indicators of income is insufficiently studied. The purpose of the article is to improve the methodical approach to the analysis of household income as a factor of formation of consumer demand for tourist goods and services. The main task is to substantiate the method of logical choice of the optimal per capita income indicator at the preliminary stage of planning the strategy of entering foreign markets and expanding the range of services offered within the country where the tourist enterprise has its residence. General scientific logical, analytical and statistical research methods were used. Numerical data for further calculations were obtained from open sources of the World Bank and the World Travel and Tourism Council. An extended description of the varieties of per capita income indicators is given, four types (nominal, real, actual, adjusted by purchasing power parity) are distinguished, from which derivative indicators are formed; examples of the implementation of the semantic concept of each subgroup, created on the basis of antagonistic comparison, in specific approaches that can be implemented by tourism enterprises and market regulators, are revealed. The classification of countries with below-average incomes (according to the World Bank methodology) is based on the discrepancy degree between nominal income and income at purchasing power parity. Four subgroups of national economies are identified, each of which has shown different characteristics of the tourist flows structure, which included outbound (import), inbound (export) and domestic (consumption by residents within the country) tourism. The description of the typical structure of tourist flows for each subgroup has confirmed the assumption of the significance of the discrepancy between nominal incomes and actual market prices in the process of forming consumer behaviour.