| VALUES IN THE MARKETING OF NATIONAL PARKS IN CHINA: AN EXPLORATORY APPLICATION OF THE MEANS-END CHAIN THEORY Catherine Sarlandie de La Robertie & Cheng Baifang Issue 33 (Vol. 17, No. 1), June 2007, pp. 79-102. The aim of this study is to draw out the principle values of Chinese visitors to national parks in China so as to improve the parks communication strategy to consumers.The literature clearly provides support and empirical evidence linking both culture and consumption: cultural values have been shown to be efficient, measurable sets of variables that are fewer, more centrally held and more closely relating to consumer behavior than demographic and psychographic measures. The data was obtained from the method of means-end chains theory and the Yau��s questionnaire of Chinese cultural values, which was distributed to a sample of 30 visitors to national parks in China. With the information obtained, and after the principal component analysis of the 67 chains collected, we found two principal chains that can explain national parks visitors�� expectations. After combining the values obtained by the method of means-end chains with the cultural values founded in the questionnaire, we propose some values that can be used in communication to increase the number of visits to Chinese national parks. |