Wided Batat and Isabelle Frochot
Introduction
Research in tourism has a long established interest in the study of tourist behaviour. Marketers, sociologists, psychologists, human geographers and other disciplines have all contributed over 50 years towards better understandings of tourist experience and behaviour. However, consumer experience is a fairly recent fi eld of interest for marketing scholars and yet has produced a complex and fascinating array of conceptualizations. This interest stems from the recogni-tion that the consumprecogni-tion of services such as art, leisure or tourism necessitates the develop-ment of new theoretical frameworks due to the specifi cities of these consumption contexts (irrational behaviour, symbolic and esthetical criteria, emotional benefi ts maximisation, importance of pleasure and memorability of the experience). This approach, the experiential marketing perspective, can be tremendously useful to enhancing understanding of tourist behaviour.
The objective of this chapter is then to provide a comprehensive and critical overview of the theoretical, methodological and practical issues in tourism marketing. The chapter shows that the experience marketing literature almost totally overlooks one of the most highly experiential consumption contexts, tourism. Indeed, the focus on product marketing contexts seems to underplay the contribution that analyses of tourism consumption could offer to this literature.
Thus greater links between experience marketing and tourism marketing research could assist tourism professionals to develop strategies to better engage consumers’ emotional and hedonic responses. Through the application of Consumer Culture Theory (CCT), this chapter offers new directions and approaches to inform tourism marketing, highlighting the key debates and issues related to consumer experiences in the tourism sector.
This chapter fi rst discusses the evolution from traditional marketing to experiential marketing and details the key principles of the experiential perspective. It then addresses the particularities of tourism to establish how experiential tourism can be defi ned and conceptualized. The last part of the chapter expands on this by integrating a vision of Consumer Culture Theory, since it provides a useful guide to the evolution observed in tourist consumer behaviour and offers indications about future changes to tourist experiences.
From a traditional marketing to an experiential marketing
For several decades, marketing and consumer researchers have conceived the consumer as a rational economic actor, the ‘‘homo economicus’’ philosophy. As a result, the cognitive and behaviourist models have dominated marketing research for decades (Batat 2011). Schmitt (1999) uses the term ‘‘traditional marketing’’ to refer to these cognitive approaches, which views consumers as rational decision makers who are mostly concerned with functional features of products and services and maximising the utility gained from consumption. However, this conception has been criticized, for instance human beings’ rational behaviour has been fi ercely questioned (Holbrook and Hirschman 1982). Another frustration with those theories has been their lack of consideration for the psychological dimensions of experiences. In 1970, Baudrillard had already exposed that consumption practices are social activities in which consumers produce meanings and exchange symbols. Since Baudrillard’s work, marketing and consumer behaviour researchers have developed a rich research stream on aspects of aestheticism, symbolism and hedonism in everyday life (c.f. Levy 1959; Sheth 1980; Westbrook 1987; Lipovetsky 2003).
In 1982, Holbrook and Hirschman produced a new approach that revolutionized academic approaches within consumer research. The authors theorized the consumer experience as subjective and personal, often emotionally charged. They introduced the concept of hedonic consumption, which was defi ned as designating ‘those facets of consumer behaviour that relate to the multi-sensory, fantasy and emotive aspects of one’s experience with products’ (Holbrook and Hirschman 1982: 92). In this perspective, the utilitarian functions of products were not denied but the symbolic meanings and emotions were also established as important dimensions of product evaluation.
Holbrook and Hirschman (1982) consequently proposed that considerations of the hedonic component would provide a better understanding of consumers that traditional consumer behaviour models had yet not addressed. This aspect was portrayed as particularly important in products for which ‘the symbolic role is especially rich and salient: for example, entertainment, arts, and leisure activities encompass symbolic aspects of consumption behaviour that make them particularly fertile ground for research’ (Holbrook and Hirschman 1982: 134).
In their original article Holbrook and Hirschman (1982) suggested that most variables used in traditional marketing should be reconsidered to establish the grounds of an experiential perspective (see Table 9.1).
According to the experiential perspective, the consumer becomes an active economic actor involved with his consumption experiences. The role of companies is to assist their customers in the production and the achievement of their experiences. O’Sullivan and Spangler (1998) proposed that the key concepts of the experiential marketing approach could be categorized as:
1 the nature of user involvement (physical, mental, emotional, social and spiritual);
2 the extent of user’s co-participation in the product’s offer;
3 the relevance of the product or service’s symbolic values;
4 the product or service’s multi-functionality; and 5 the central role placed on the experience.
The consumer tends to immerse him/herself and explore a multiplicity of new meanings of his/
her life (Firat and Dholakia 1998). It is this full immersion within an original experience that provides unique unforgettable pleasure for consumers (Carù and Cova 2006).
Towards an experiential approach
Since the consumption experience extends over a period of time, Arnould and Price (1993) have identifi ed four major stages:
• The pre-consumption experience, which involves searching for, planning, day-dreaming about, foreseeing or imagining the experience.
• The purchase experience, which encompasses choice, payment, packaging, the encounter with the service and the environment.
• The core consumption experience including sensation, satiety, satisfaction/dissatisfaction, irritation or fl ow, and transformation.
• The remembered consumption experience and the nostalgia for previously lived experiences that reactivates consumption through the use of photographs to re-live past experiences for example. This is also based on accounts of stories and on discussions or arguments with friends about the past, which contributes to the classifi cation of memories.
Thirty years later, the experiential perspective has gained ground to be recognized as an essential approach in consumer behaviour. Pine and Gilmore (1998) argue that companies or destinations, to achieve competitive advantages, should produce experiences, as a kind of new category of offer that can be launched on the market. The staged experience is then the ultimate category of the company’s offer as opposed to the goods, services and ideas produced (Hetzel 2002;
Schmitt 1999).
Over the years the experience literature has taken two directions. On one side, practitioners have produced a series of books that have become useful guides to assist managers in designing the experience (Pine and Gilmore 1998; Schmitt 1999, etc.). Whilst those contributions are valuable, they have also been criticized for their lack of consideration of value creation, especially in the pre-purchase and post-purchase consumptions steps (Tynan and McKechnie 2009). They also tend to lack theoretical grounding that would provide more power to the practical applications they describe. On the other side, academics have produced theoretical contributions that bring more depth to the understanding of the consumer experience such as the service Table 9.1 Variables used in traditional marketing theories compared to the experiential approach
Traditional approaches Experiential approach
Stimuli Verbal
Tangible
Non-verbal Sensorial Consumer objective Maximize utility
Extrinsic objectives (to consume in order to achieve an objective) Utilitarian criteria
Experience lived
Intrinsic objective (product consumed for itself)
Esthetical and symbolical criteria
Goal Maximize utility and value Maximize emotional benefits
Decision Formulate preferences with multi attributes comparisons
Holistic perception and difficulty to elaborate concise expectations
Mediating variables Attitudes Emotions, feelings
Post-purchase evaluation Satisfaction Pleasure, memory
Involvement Level of involvement (high/low) Involvement type (portion of the hedonic component)
Source: Adapted from Bourgeon and Filser (1995)
dominant logic and the notion of co-construction (Vargo and Lusch 2004; Carù and Cova 2006; Edvardsson, Tronvoll and Cruger 2011; etc.), and the understanding of emotions in the experience (Oliver 1980; Westbrook 1987; Richins 1997; etc.), which are discussed in other chapters in this volume.
The experiential approach in the tourism context
Surprisingly, despite the relevance of tourism consumption contexts as exemplary to study experiential consumption theory and practice, tourism has rarely been the object of experiential marketing studies in the mainstream marketing fi eld. In contrast tourism marketing and consumer behaviour researchers have been slow to embrace experience marketing theory and practice, despite the fact that many tourism and leisure researchers have provided very interesting insights into behavioural processes associated with the distinctive characteristics of tourism experiences.
Indeed, tourism embraces such a vast array of experiences, ranging from a short weekend visiting family to a world tour that might last a year that it may impede the application of experience marketing concepts. Everything about tourism consumption is different from other forms of services: it involves multiple encounters and staying in a different place and culture for a relatively long length of time (longer than any other service experiences studied apart from perhaps hospital stays). It often takes place in locations where tourists would not necessarily wish to live on a daily basis (coastal areas, islands, countryside, high up mountain resorts, developing countries . . .) but that are prized for their resources (space available, activities, weather, ‘exoticism’
of the location, etc.). In order to explicate the tourist experience, the following section addresses two main components of tourist behaviour: motivations and, the different experiences that tourists seek at the destination.
The specifi cities of the tourist experience: motivation to escape
To understand fully tourist behaviour it is important to understand what drives tourists to consumer vacation experiences, since this dictates what types of experiences they seek from a tourism product or destination. The fi rst and most important motivation expressed by tourists is that of getting away from their daily life: a priori to the idea of travelling is the identifi cation of need to escape the usual environment. The strength of this motivation is associated to the fact that getting away represents a facilitating factor to an achievement of other motivations that will be experienced at the destination. For instance, to be in a different location allows tourists to forget about their daily burdens (stressful urban environments but also simple everyday burdens such as the pile of washing up or the DIY that needs to be done around the house). The only way to detach from those daily burdens is to physically get away, this then allows tourists to free their time and spirit to immerse themselves fully in their holiday experience. This element has strong implications in terms of managing the experience as tourists on vacation seek freedom from elements that remind them of the negative aspects of their daily life (long commuting, crowded and noisy environments, pollution, excessive noise, queuing, imposed rhythms, lack of space, etc.).
The specifi cities of the tourist experience: what tourists seek
The second dimension to the tourist experience lies with what tourists seek while at the destination. One of the most frequently cited studies of motivations was that by Crompton in 1979 that investigated travel motives of a small sample of tourists. This study identifi ed eight
Towards an experiential approach major travel motives: escape from a perceived mundane environment, exploration, evaluation of self, relaxation, prestige, regression, enhancement of kinship relationships and facilitation of social interactions. Other researchers have presented classifi cations of motivations, which added to our understanding of the diversity of motivations for travelling (Krippendorf 1987;
Moutinho 1987; Mcintosh and Goeldner 1990; Crompton and McKay 1997). Overall, most studies identifi ed as key vacation motivations: getting away, relaxing, social connections, learning, and improving one’s own capabilities. Those motivations are directly connected to the experi-ence tourists expect while at the destination, and therefore they are central to the understanding of the tourist experience.
Successful tourism products are those that achieve satisfaction for these motivations. However, very different types of experience exist depending on the strength of intervention from the tourism industry and the strength and direction of tourists’ motivations.
• On a fi rst level, various forms of connections with the tourism industry can be sought.
For instance, tourists travelling independently perhaps wish to immerse themselves in the culture of a new country (particularly if they decide to stay with local people, share eating experiences, etc.). Therefore they may seek limited contacts with the tourism industry. On the other side of the spectrum, consumers may prefer tourist experiences within holiday resorts or cruise ships where everything is planned for the consumer (especially within an all-inclusive offer). Often, even the burden of making daily decisions is removed from consumers, allowing them another form of total immersion with their holiday. Between those two extremes, various other forms of tourist experience exist especially since over the years consumers have evolved towards more alternative forms of tourism (Stamboulis and Skayannis 2009).
• On a second level, it is important to understand the extent to which tourists might require home comforts, familiar cultural environments while at the destination, or whether they want to immerse themselves fully in the culture/country visited and escape familiar cultural norms. In other terms, consumers might travel thousands of miles only to stay very much in their own socio-cultural environmental bubble (Cohen 1979). Typically, mass Mediterranean packaged resort destinations can reproduce the cultural environment of British tourists (food, drinks, pubs, newspapers, satellite television, language, etc.) and only a few of the visited destination assets (sea, sand and sun and goods at a lower price than at home) are required.
Pine and Gilmore (1998) argued that companies could gain competitive advantage by differentiating experiences according to the degree of active or passive participation of individuals with the service environment. The relation with the environment could either be one of immersion (the individual is fully immersed in the experience, living the experience through all senses and often in communion with others) or absorption (the individual becomes absorbed by what he sees/does, but this implication does not necessarily involve other processes). Pine and Gilmore advocated that the more the four realms were present in an encounter, the richer the experience would be.
The approach adopted by Pine and Gilmore can be satisfying for leisure/entertainment experiences but is insuffi cient to translate the variety of experiences observed in the tourism world. Underneath, the four realms proposed by Pine and Gilmore have been revisited to take on board existing knowledge from the tourism fi eld (Figure 9.1). The fi rst axis is inspired by Cohen’s work on the environmental bubble (1979) that views tourists as ranging from individuals who seek total immersion with the country visited (non-institutionalized tourists) to tourists who prefer to stay in their own environmental bubble (institutionalized tourists). The other axis
is then composed of the willingness or not, from tourists, to purchase a product managed for them by the tourism industry or whether they want to undertake their travel independently from this industry.
By using both these axes, all of the tourists’ experiences can be portrayed and the fi gure gives a good indication of the level and type of intervention from the tourism industry in that process.
As an example, several tourist products have been placed on the map, however the sizes of the boxes are not indicative of market shares.
The fi rst category, COCOON, refers to experiences where consumers seek total disconnection from everyday life and pressures. Those consumers do not necessarily want to discover the country, they will tend to stay within a known environment, with other tourists of the same nationality, a known level of comfort and references to their own culture (language, food, etc.). They seek total immersion in the holiday mood but not necessarily with the country visited. The types of products that correspond to this category are for instance integrated resorts, cruise ships, all-inclusive offers or business tourism.
The second category, AUTONOMY, groups consumers who seek an experience that remains close to their environmental bubble but do not rely totally on the tourism industry to organize their experience. In other words, those consumers will wish to stay within their environmental bubble but organize their holiday themselves (often for fi nancial reasons). For instance with the advent of the Internet and low-cost airlines, consumers can organize a holiday with the same characteristics as a basic packaged product.
Figure 9.1 Classifying tourist experiences (adapted from Morgan et al. 2012).
Towards an experiential approach The third category, FUSION, groups experiences whereby consumers are both involved in its organization and aim to immerse themselves within the destination. This immersion can be linked to an interest in the destination’s culture, natural elements and/or local inhabitants. Tourists have the need to ‘feel’ the destination through different senses: see, try, taste, smell, feel, etc. They appre-ciate the possibility to organize their own travel and seek authenticity and real connections with the destination. Products which fall in that category are varied and numerous: a hiking trip in a national park or staying with local inhabitants (gîtes, bed & breakfast, couch surfi ng, etc.).
The fourth category, PROTECTION, groups consumers who are in need for connections with the destination visited but who want to stay within the safety net of the tourism industry.
Their experience mixes a need or some degree of discovery but the experience is partly managed by the tourism industry since consumers have some degree of fear for unknown settings. This category can group vacations such as an organized holiday led by a guide or a hire and drive holiday. The following part of the chapter will address how this variety of experiences can translate into a list of experience standards and attributes that can be considered by practitioners and academics.
Tourist experience and experiential tourism
The tourist experience is the locus of value creation within the tourism sector. Studies show that the tourism industry is based on creating unforgettable experiences (Prentice, Witt and Hamer 1998; Buhalis 2000). Offering high quality services and unforgettable experiences is then the focus of the tourist industry. Tourists travel to different places, interact with people from different cultural backgrounds, and bring back travel memories, and these travel activities become embed-ded within the totality of lived experiences (McCabe and Foster 2006). Thus, the tourist experi-ence is a socially constructed term whereby the meaning of the tourist experiexperi-ence is associated with multiple interpretations from social, environmental, and activity components of the overall experience (Tussyadiah and Fesenmaier 2009). The attributes of socially constructed tourist expe-riences encompass a set of qualities such as symbolism (meaning, feelings and emotion), socializa-tion (meeting the locals, participasocializa-tion), immersion, memories, etc. These qualities may be used by tourism professionals to enhance tourist experiences and immersion within the destination.
Based on a review of the tourism literature, a set of attributes can be considered by tourism professionals to defi ne experiential tourism. This list of standards has been adapted from the works of Haugen and Erffmeyer (2004) and Hedin, Barnes and Chen (2005), and might be used as either a checklist, with a simple check to point out presence or absence of the standard, or as an evaluation form, rating each standard, for example, on a scale of one (little or none of the attribute) to fi ve (full compliance with the standard):
• People create meaning through direct experience.
• The experience includes the people met, the places visited and the activities participated in.
• Experiential tourism can draw people into local nature, culture and history.
• Experiences can also take place in closed environments (resorts) with little contacts with local culture/nature.
• The experience includes pre-departure trip planning and post-trip follow-up, including memories.
• Experiential tourism is very personal, individual and perceived as unique for each visitor.
• Quality, memorable visitor experiences are a shared outcome between the visitor and the experience provider, but some experiences can take place independently from the provider (auto-creation).
• Experiential tourism opportunities allow for personal growth and refl ect the values and interests of the individual visitor.
• Experiential tourism provides diverse experiences that match the visitor’s interests and provide a sense of personal accomplishment, thereby creating their own unique memories.
• The desired outcome of experiential tourism is to achieve a complete participatory experience that provides new knowledge and experiences.
• Experiential tourism opportunities can encourage the meeting and coming together of different cultures, their problems and potential.
• Cultural elements are shared in an atmosphere of traditional or non-traditional ways of life.
• Experiential tourism involves visitors in what is being experienced rather than merely describing.
• Experiential tourism opportunities expand personal horizons.
• Experiential tourism opportunities should provide personal enrichment, enlightenment, stimulation and engagement as motivators.
• Experiential tourism attracts people to destinations and attractions.
• Experiential tourism attracts markets to merchandise.
• Experiential tourism engages all fi ve senses.
• Experiential tourism will be laden with strong emotions and will most probably be a transformative experience.
• Experiential tourism opportunities include learning a new skill, engaging in a new activity or experiencing an existing activity differently.
• Experiential tourism includes the story of a place/person/culture.
These attributes serve as a framework for managers of service providers as they adjust and grow their enterprises in the twenty-fi rst century. Each comparison will provide some opportunities to make small or large adjustments in current practices in order to provide more meaningful and memorable experiences for customers. The next section will go beyond the experience standards by providing a deeper theoretical context to the discussion of tourist experiences. In this part authors will include issues of a new theoretical approach, Consumer Culture Theory (CCT) to better understand the characteristics of the ‘new tourist’ behaviours.
The defi nition of the ‘new tourist’ through the multidisciplinary paradigm of CCT
As discussed earlier in the chapter, marketing and consumer researchers such as Arnould and Thompson (2005) and Belk and Sherry (2007) have placed the concept of ‘experience’ at the heart of an emerging paradigm through the philosophy of CCT. It is a multidisciplinary approach based on the works of some French sociologists such as Baudrillard (1970), Bourdieu (1980) and Certeau (1990), which are partly responsible for the emergence of a cultural and a symbolic approach in the consumption fi eld. In consumer research, Belk and Sherry (2007: xiii) in the fi rst conference dedicated to CCT, defi ned it as ‘an interdisciplinary fi eldencompassing macro approaches, interpretative and critical perspective of the consumer behaviour’. Following this perspective, CCT researchers take into account the social representations and the cultural practices when studying the complex behaviour of the consumer/tourist. The main objective is then to study each cultural group in relation to the meanings he provides to his consumption practices and the symbolic dimensions he expects within his experiences. Thus, adopting a cultural consumption posture through a CCT
Towards an experiential approach perspective, allows researchers to rethink the act of consumption as a consumer or a group participation in the identity construction process.
Therefore, aspects such as: ideology, culture, symbolism and experience are all an integral part of the individual behaviour and can’t be isolated when studying consumption activities in different contexts. Since the consolidation of the multidisciplinary current of CCT, the research in the consumer fi eld has taken a major socio-cultural and experiential turn, which requires a new analytical approach. In contrast to tourism studies, CCT has contributed to the enrichment of research methodologies in the consumption fi eld and led researchers to overcome the cognitive and rational approaches so far applied in consumer and tourism studies by focusing on the interpretative approaches that give a central place to the individual’s experience and his feelings. The following section will highlight the use of CCT as a conceptual framework to explain the main characteristics of tourist behaviours by taking into account cultural, symbolic, experiential and ideological aspects related to his tourism and consumption experiences.
The starting point of the fi rst refl ections is none other than the tourist who has changed status and even multiplied his functions and roles in relation to the meanings he assigns to his con-sumption. The underlying idea is that the Western consumer society has changed over the past decades. This has contributed to the emergence of a tourist/consumer who has new expecta-tions and may be qualifi ed as emotional, active, digital, experiential, etc. Thus, new consumption paradoxes and trends related to the hyperconsumption society and the omnipresence of social media have infl uenced the shift in market segmentation from market/product logic to a more consumer/tourist centric approach.
Following the CCT paradigm, the main characteristics of the ‘new tourist’ may refl ect different behaviours:
1 responsible and ethical;
2 paradoxical;
3 experiential and hedonistic;
4 empowered and competent;
5 co-producing; and 6 seeking intermediation.
These characteristics have been inspired by the works of Batat (2011) who identifi ed the main consumption patterns of the new consumer.
A new tourist who is responsible and ethical
The new tourist is very critical towards marketing discourses and particularly advertising. He expresses a responsible behaviour and engages himself within his consumption practices since he is aware of the impact of his consumption acts. This kind of responsible behaviours refl ects the fact that the new tourist who becomes aware of his economic power, decides to consume and act with respect to his values. His main ideology is to consume and purchase consumption items only if it fi ts his ethical value system. The reasons that justify tourist motivations to be responsible might be: product safety, environmental impact or employees’ welfare (Crane 2001). These reasons are all conscious or unconscious ways to reveal the ideological dimension of goods (Chessel and Cochoy 2004) and build a set of ethical proposi-tions around consumption (Smith 1990). The responsible consumer acts then as a citizen who wants to learn more about the company political engagement and the fairness of its brand and/
or product.