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Experiential Aspects of Tourism Gift Consumption

Dr Jackie Clarke

Reader in Marketing

Marketing & Operations Management Dept

jrclarke@brookes.ac.uk

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Differentiation: Tourism literature on gift giving = souvenirs(Nambu & Vogt, 2006; Swanson & Horridge, 2006)

Early focus on service characteristics – intangibilityvariability, perishability, inseparability (co-creation)

Discourse: Models of gift giving from anthropology &marketing (Banks,1979; Sherry,1983); Perfectgifts (eg Belk, 1996; Durgee and Sego, 2001):‘Rulebooks’ – symbolic communication &economic exchange (Schiffman and Cohn, 2009).Model of experience gift giving behaviour

Direction: Experiential marketing & hedonic consumption (the pleasure principle) (eg Holbrook and Hirschman 1982; Tynan and McKechnie, 2009)

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Fantasies [imagination & dreaming]

Feelings [emotions]

Fun [playfulness]

Paper Structure:

(after Holbrook & Hirschman,1982)

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Purpose:

to examine the behaviour of consumers (donors & recipients) in the decision making, exchange and consumption of gifts that are tourism and leisure products, with a particular focus on their experiences of feelings, fantasy and fun throughout the consumption process

- to address something of the gap in the literaturepertaining to tourism as gifts

- to posit seven questions for managers

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Thermae Bath Spa Photographer Andy Short

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Commercial ExperienceCompanies (Generalist)

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Commercial ExperienceCompanies: Specialist

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‘Serial gift consumption’

‘Enlightened’ Tourism / LeisureProviders …

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Airfields:

South YorkshireManchesterLeicestershireSurrey

Generating the dataset …

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Generating the dataset …

Semi-structured telephone interviews with Marketing Directors of four experience companies

Ten depth interviews with donors and recipients of experience gifts

52 cases (29 given and 23 received)

Average time of interview 1 hours 23 minutes

Self-completion written instrument by recipients of historic plane flight

137 usable cases

Depth interviews with four tourism businesses (non-experience companies)

Tour operator 200,000 tourists+; specialist tour operator 500 tourists; leading entrance fee-based heritage attraction 400,000+ visitors; small river cruise operator.

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ExperienceCompanies(Industry)

StructuredTelephoneInterviews

Donors &Recipients

(Consumers)

DepthInterviews

RecipientsHistoric flight(Consumers)

WrittenInstrument

Semi-StructuredInterviews

Tourism &Leisure

Providers(Industry)

An Overview of the Four Phases of Research

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A Synthesis of the Tourism and LeisureGift Consumption Process

Planning,Purchase,

Preparation[Decision Making]

Exchange

Preparation

(Delayed) (Immediate) (Serial)

Consumption

Post-consumption

FANTASIES

FEELINGS

FUN

PURCHASED

MODIFIED

CREATED

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Typology of Experience Gifts

Type of experience gift:

Straight commercial experience (purchased) 1

Modified commercial experience (modified) 2

Hand-crafted experience(created) 3

Specialist experience companiesExamples

Leisure, tourism, hospitality providers Examples

Specialist experience companies Examples

Leisure, tourism, hospitality providers Examples

Examples

Tiger Moth flight Hotel party Tiger Moth flight + BBQ

Thames boat trip + dinner

Blenheim Palace experience – palace + picnic

Half-day off road driving

Wood turning course Tiger Moth flight + weekend break

YHA ‘lucky dip’ outdoor activities *

London experience – West End Show + lunch + Harvey Nichols shopping

Formula One rally driving

Snowboarding lessons Hurricane flight + pub lunch

Kayaking trip + B&B accommodation

London experience – London Eye + museums + lunch + cinema

Hot air balloon flight Venice trip Hurricane flight + celebration drink

Theatre + dinner London experience – London Eye + Ronnie Scotts + aquarium + accommodation

Tank driving Le Manoir experience Single seater racing driving + lunch

Spa day + dinner London experience – London Eye and IMAX cinema

Hurricane flight EuroDisney trip Tiger Moth flight + dinner

Camping barn trip - accommodation + activities + meals

1.Purchased as single experience product or package2.Purchased as single experience product or package and deliberately modified through additional experience(s) 3.Invented and created by donor from commercial and / or non-commercial elements into a hand-crafted experience

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Favouritesinger

Timed forshark feeding

Created: ‘London Experience’

+ Accommodation Meals

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“If you’ve got something like a box in front of you, you are, well, ‘What’s that?’ andyou wouldn’t automatically think ‘oh that’s …’, unless it’s an envelope, you wouldn’tthink about a voucher for something. I think because he got something in a box,he’s probably thinking ‘Now that’s probably too big for a computer game, I wonderwhat that could be?” (Female, 26-35, donor – Single seater racer driving)

“I happened to find some socks in Tesco with Footynut – the little cartoon – on the side. So I wrapped this little season ticket holder inside the socks, so he thought he’d just got a pair of socks. You know, silly socks for Christmas”(Female, 46-55, donor - Football season ticket)

Exchange

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‘Follow me’ Strategy

Activity, destination, participants(what, where and who)successively revealed to recipient

Recipient in alert or mindful state(Langer, 1989)-actively search for ‘clues’

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‘Sharing’ Consumption:Fun and playfulness

Donor as participant …

Donor as spectator …

Significant other(s) …

Co-consumers …

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Seven Questions forMarketing Managers:

Q1: How to leverage networks & partnerships with other local providers tofacilitate donors in ‘hand-creating’ & modifying tourism gifts?Q2: Have advantages & disadvantages to provider been weighed out? Eg new buyer segments? Cash flow? Add-on sales? Q3: How to develop cost-effective marketing information systems to capture gift activity / identify & profile donors & recipients?Q4: How far are pre-use information requirements & in-use needs, benefits sought & behaviours understood / acted on for segments of donors & recipients?Q5: How well are different forms of sharing in consumption recognised & integrated into product design?Q6: Would a multisensory audit or blueprint of the tourism product offer new opportunities to embed multisensory aspects into product design, from initial entry through to exit & reinforcement?Q7: What physical goods (with due attention to multisensory properties) could best be used as props at exchange & to stimulate dreams in likely timelag between exchange & consumption (and even onward into memory)?

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Thank you for your attention – Any questions?

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Key References

Clarke, J. (2009) Purchased, modified, created: consumer voices in experience gifts, Service Industries Journal, 29 (9), 1-14.

Clarke, J. (2008) Gifts of tourism: insights to consumer behavior. Annals of Tourism Research, 35 (2), 529-550.

Clarke, J. (2008) Experiences as gifts: from process to model, European Journal of Marketing, 42 (3/4), 365-389.

Clarke, J. (2007) The Four ‘S’s’ of Experience Gifting Behaviour, International Journal of Hospitality Management, 26 (1), 98-116.

Clarke, J. (2006) Different to ‘Dust Collectors’? The giving and receiving of experience gifts, Journal of Consumer Behaviour, 5 (6), 533-549.

McKechnie, S. and Tynan, C. (2006) Social meanings in Christmas consumption: an exploratory study of UK celebrants’ consumption rituals, Journal of Consumer Behaviour, 5 (2), 130-144.

Schiffman, L. G. and Cohn, D.Y. (2009) Are they playing by the same rules? A consumer gifting classification of marital dyads, Journal of Business Research, 62 (11), 1054-1062.

Sherry, J. (1983) Gift giving: an anthropological perspective, Journal of Consumer Research, 10 (2), 157-168.