Holiday taking decisions – The role of spouses

Grounded in part the previous literature on household decision making and in part in the literature on tourism decision making, this paper tries to add to the literature by surveying Turkish academics with respect to spousal purchase decisions. In particular, the study assesses the decision tactics used for several consumer goods including vacation and travel and the link between decision tactics and consumer satisfaction/likelihood to produce positive word of mouth. The study findings confirm that spousal opinions matter and that compromise is a commonly used tactic, regardless of their features of durability (e.g. car, furniture) or non-durability (e.g. vacation, eating out), followed by the introduction of persuasion as the next most powerful tactic. Compromise is also positively associated with the level of consumer/tourist satisfaction with the product and the intention to recommend.