Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
9
Towards an experiential
approach in tourism studies
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 consumption 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.
