Corporate Meeting Destination Choice: The Effects of Organizational Structure

This study attempted to determine the influence of organizational structure on the novelty preference for corporate meeting destination choice. The three dimensions of structure incorporated were formalization, centralization and complexity. A total of 75 corporate meeting planners drawn from public listed services organizations were involved. The main method of data collection was questionnaire survey and multiple regression analysis was employed as the main statistical technique. The results revealed that both formalization and centralization were negatively correlated with novelty preference while complexity was positively correlated. However, only complexity contributed significantly to the prediction of novelty preference for corporate meeting destination choice. The main implication of this study is pertaining to the segmentation and targeting of the corporate meeting market. This study helped in bridging the gap between tourism marketing and organizational research. It also contributed by developing the measurement for novelty preference from the context of experiential marketing.