Research Article
Consumers’ Trivial Inconvenience Should be a Marketing Opportunity: Tax-Refund Service Marketing For Inbound Tourists, KT Tourist Reward Business Case
1 Hankuk University of Foreign Studies
Published: January 2015 · Vol. 19, No. 2 · pp. 63-86
Full Text
Abstract
In korea, foreign tourists can be provided with a tax refund service, in which they can be paid back the money that they already paid when they were purchasing goods. This service is very practical but there always existed inconveniences. After purchasing goods, foreign tourists should hand in their passports and ask for tax refund verbally and then they can get refund slip issued in hand writing. After this, at the airport customs, they should present a passport and refund slips which they have in hand all the tour duration. KTis, affiliated with KT, launched ‘KT Tourist Reward’ service . KTis actually started an operation of tax refund and This is the first whole automated tax refund service in the world. Inchon national airport designated KTis as an automated tax refund business partner on April 11, 2013. Through this automated system, 24 hours, 365 days refund process can be available. So, KTis just have improved these inconveniences so drastically that it has been able to reduce the service steps from 10 service steps to 6 service steps. Moreover, Free Independent Travel has been increasing gradually and ubiquitous tourism service is considered as the most desirable tourism service type. KTis has just provided tax refund service based on application and applied paperless process. So all the stakeholder such as franchisee which are first consumers' contact points, consumers, service provider come to be able to improve convenience and promptness and this can lay the foundation for more frequent service uses.
