Understanding and meeting the challenges of consumer/tourist experience research

Abstract

This paper seeks to provide a framework that will help us identify and better understand the major challenges we face in consumer/tourist experience research. These challenges have both theoretical and managerial dimensions. Based on an extensive and comprehensive review of the current literature in the fi eld, we have categorised extant knowledge into six main streams of theoretical thinking and empirical research. These streams were identifi ed as the fundamentals of the experience, experience-seeking behaviours, methodologies used in experience research, the nature of specifi c tourism experiences, managerial issues in the design and delivery of experiences, and the evolutionary trail of experience thinking. I t has been nearly a decade since Pine and Gilmore (1999) published their popularising treatise on 'The Experience Economy', and over a decade since the appearance of one of the earliest scholarly journal research articles on the tourism experience: 'The Service Experience in Tourism' (Otto and Ritchie, 1996). This paper sought to provide some initial insights into the critical dimensions of 'the experience' in tourism -and served to launch us on our quest to better understand what many have argued is the central challenge facing tourism planners, namely, the design of effective touristic experiences.In preparing this review, we fi rst undertook to thoroughly examine material on 'the experience' so as to provide an overview of existing research. We then proceeded to sort the documentation into six broad categories or 'streams', each of which appeared to refl ect a stream of thinking and related research. The streams identifi ed were as follows:Stream 1 -the 'fundamental stream' involves conceptual work and/or research that sought to defi ne and understand 'the essence' of 'the tourism experience'. This includes a sub-stream in which researchers use specifi c theoretical frameworks as their point of departure;Stream 2 -a stream of thinking/research that sought to understand the tourist's experience-seeking behaviour; Int. J. Tourism Res. 11, 111-126 (2009) to manage the delivery of a basic/satisfactory/quality/extraordinary/memorable experience; INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF TOURISM RESEARCH

The Challenge to Foster Foreign Students’ Experiences for Sustainable Higher Educational Institutions

“…As expected, tourism is one of the economic sectors that benefits most from experiential marketing, as has being demonstrated by recent works in different contexts [31][32][33][34]. These works confirm the power of experiential marketing in destinations promotion, and the relationship between the emotional and intellectual dimensions of visitor experiences, travel intentions, and destination loyalty.…”

How Can Consumer Research Contribute to Increased Understanding of Tourist Experiences? A Conceptual Review

“…The previous review clearly proves that there has been a considerable development in CCT research, within both the individual and the sociocultural orientations, since the time that Holbrook and Hirschman (1982) were "discovered" by tourism researchers (Ritchie & Hudson, 2009). In the subsequent sections we will briefly discuss and offer some tentative suggestions of how CCT could contribute to complement or extend the conceptual entrance to the research on tourist experiences.…”

“…Some of the sociological perspectives possess a somewhat critical view (Pearce, 2011), especially in association to mass tourism (Boorstin, 1964;Bruner, 1991;Cohen, 1979Cohen, , 1988Cohen, , 1995Dann, 1996;Eco, 1986;Lash & Urry, 1994;MacCannell, 1976;Uriely, 2005;Urry & Larsen, 2011). A more "positive" view are prominent within marketing and psychology (Björk, 2014;Jennings et al, 2009;Jensen, 2014;Larsen, 2007;O'Dell, 2007;Pearce, 2011;Prebensen et al, 2014;Quan & Wang, 2004;Ritchie & Hudson, 2009;Volo, 2009). Authors in tourism sociology have categorized different sets of structural characteristics embedding tourist behavior and have identified some types of primarily socioculture-generated motivations (Dann, 1981), symbols and meanings associated with such behavior (see Uriely, 2009).…”

“…As the former has contributed with overall structural frameworks of tourist experiences, the latter has offered empirically based conceptualizations on micro level. In studies of experience in tourism research there are several references to the "experiential turn" in consumer research (Borrie & Roggenbuck, 2001;Chan, 2009;Jennings et al, 2009;Prebensen & Foss, 2011;Ritchie & Hudson, 2009;Volo, 2009;Walls, Okumus, Wang, & Kwun, 2011b), and the most popular seems to be Holbrook and Hirschman (1982). Unfortunately, there have been limited attempts of bridging the gap and of obtaining better integrations between different schools of thoughts on travel motivation and experiences in tourism research, first of all between the primarily individualistic psychological orientation and the wider sociological social orientation (Dann, 2014;Jamal & Lee, 2003).…”

“…Unfortunately, there have been limited attempts of bridging the gap and of obtaining better integrations between different schools of thoughts on travel motivation and experiences in tourism research, first of all between the primarily individualistic psychological orientation and the wider sociological social orientation (Dann, 2014;Jamal & Lee, 2003). Ritchie and Hudson (2009) point at the basic challenges "to reach a consensus concerning the true meaning of the tourism experience through thorough assessment of relevant theories" (p. 123). This seems to be needed to fully understand "the linkages between the experiential worlds of home and away" (Dann, 2014, p. 49) and to unite tourism as production (macro) with tourism as consumption (micro).…”