Heterogeneity in consumer preference toward mega-sport event travel packages: Implications for smart tourism marketing strategy

•Sports tourists often adopt a simplified decision rule while purchasing.•Sports tourists’ preferences for a travel package are spatially heterogeneous.•A geographically weighted regression is used for detecting spatial variability.•A geographical target marketing would be helpful in event marketing. Consumers’ decision-making processes and behaviors are often considered heterogeneous depending on various factors (i.e., decision strategy, spatial location, and individual characteristics). To better understand consumers’ decision-making process in the context of mega-sport events, the current study explores two potential decision biases inducing consumers’ heterogeneity – 1) a simplified decision rule model and 2) spatial variability. More specifically, this study conducted two sequential analyses that explore spatially varying preferences toward the mega-sport event travel package considering the effect of the simplified decision rule. Results revealed that the simplified decision rule model, including a selective evaluation of product attributes, explained better than the full model, considering all product attributes. This study also observed spatially varying preferences toward mega-sport event packages without any meaningful differences in psychological constructs. The findings contribute to the literature on consumer decision bias and spatial variability in tourists’ behaviors. Theoretical and managerial implications are provided in the conclusion.