Creating experience value in tourism

CREATING EXPERIENCE VALUE IN TOURISM

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CREATING EXPERIENCE VALUE

IN TOURISM

Edited by

Nina K. Prebensen

University of Tromsø, The Arctic University of Norway

Joseph S. Chen

Indiana University at Bloomington, USA

and

Muzaff er Uysal

Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University, USA

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A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library, London, UK.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Creating experience value in tourism / edited by Nina K. Prebensen, University of

Tromsø, Norway, Joseph S. Chen, Indiana University at Bloomington, Muzaff er Uysal,

Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University.

pages cm

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN 978-1-78064-348-9 (alk. paper)

1. Tourism--Psychological aspects. 2. Tourists--Attitudes. 3. Tourists--Psychology.

I. Prebensen, Nina K.

G155.A1C735 2014

338.4’791--dc23

2013042974

ISBN-13: 978 1 78064 348 9

Commissioning editor: Claire Parfi tt

Editorial assistant: Alexandra Lainsbury

Production editor: Simon Hill

Typeset by Columns Design XML Ltd, Reading, UK.

Printed and bound in the UK by CPI Group (UK) Ltd, Croydon, CR0 4YY.

v

Contents

Contributors vii

Preface xi

1. Co-creation of Tourist Experience: Scope, Defi nition and Structure 1

Nina K. Prebensen, Joseph S. Chen and Muzaff er Uysal

2. Dynamic Drivers of Tourist Experiences 11

Joseph S. Chen, Nina K. Prebensen and Muzaff er Uysal

3. Tourist Experience Value: Tourist Experience and Life Satisfaction 22

Peter Björk

4. Conceptualization of Value Co-creation in the Tourism Context 33

Prakash K. Chathoth, Gerardo R. Ungson, Robert J. Harrington,

Levent Altinay, Fevzi Okumus and Eric S.W. Chan

5. Why, Oh Why, Oh Why, Do People Travel Abroad? 48

Graham M.S. Dann

6. Revisiting Self-congruity Th eory in Travel and Tourism 63

M. Joseph Sirgy

7. Moving People: A Conceptual Framework for Understanding How

Visitor Experiences can be enhanced by Mindful Attention to Interest 79

Tove I. Dahl

8. Co-creation of Experience Value: A Tourist Behaviour Approach 95

Lidia Andrades and Frederic Dimanche

9. Authenticity as a Value Co-creator of Tourism Experiences 113

Haywantee Ramkissoon and Muzaff er Uysal

vi Contents

10. Experience Co-creation Depends on Rapport-building: Training

Implications for the Service Frontline 125

Vincent P. Magnini and Kasey Roach

11. Approaches for the Evaluation of Visitor Experiences at Tourist

Attractions 139

Øystein Jensen

12. Storytelling in a Co-creation Perspective 157

Line Mathisen

13. Tourist Information Search: A DIY Approach to Creating

Experience Value 169

Tor Korneliussen

14. Co-creation of Value and Social Media: How? 182

Atila Yüksel and Akan Yanık

15. Prices and Value in Co-produced Hospitality and Tourism

Experiences 207

Xiaojuan ( Jady) Yu and Zvi Schwartz

16. Value Creation: A Tourism Mobilities Perspective 221

Bruce Prideaux

17. Guide Performance: Co-created Experiences for Tourist Immersion 234

Lena Mossberg, Monica Hanefors and Ann Heidi Hansen

18. Value Creation and Co-creation in Tourist Experiences: An East Asian

Cultural Knowledge Framework Approach 248

Young-Sook Lee and Nina K. Prebensen

19. Challenges and Future Research Directions 262

Nina K. Prebensen, Muzaff er Uysal and Joseph S. Chen

Index 271

vii

Contributors

Levent Altinay is Professor of Strategy and Entrepreneurship at Oxford Brookes

University Business Faculty, UK. His research interests are entrepreneurship,

strategic alliances and international business. Using primarily qualitative

methods, as well as mixed methods, he is particularly interested in how

entrepreneurs start up and develop their businesses and how fi rms establish

partnerships internationally. Email: atilayuksel@gmail.com

Lidia Andrades is Assistant Professor of Marketing at the University of

Extremadura in southwest Spain. Her research interests are tourist behaviour,

destination competitiveness and multivariate analysis. Lidia is the Director of

NETOUR (Network for excellence in tourism through organizations and

universities in Russia). Email: andrades@unex.es

Peter Björk is Professor in Marketing at Hanken School of Economics in Finland.

He is involved in research addressing various tourism-related issues, and he has

had articles published in various tourism journals. His key areas of expertise are

service design, branding consumer experience and ecotourism. Email: peter.

bjork@hanken.fi

Eric S.W. Chan is Assistant Professor in the School of Hotel and Tourism

Management at Hong Kong Polytechnic University. His research interests

include hotel environmental management and tourist behaviour. In addition to

conducting a range of training programmes for the hotel industry, he has

served as Hotel Management Specialist, assisting the Hong Kong Quality

Assurance Agency (HKQAA) audit team to assess the ISO 9000 quality

management system of hotels. Email: eric.sw.chan@polyu.edu.hk

Prakash K. Chathoth is Associate Professor in the Department of Marketing,

School of Business and Management, American University of Sharjah, UAE.

His research interests include topics related to strategic and services

management/marketing in the tourism/hospitality industry context. Email:

pkchathoth@aus.edu

viii Contributors

Joseph S. Chen is Associate Professor of Tourism, Hospitality and Event

Management in the School of Public Health, Indiana University at

Bloomington. His research interests include sustainable management,

marketing and the social impact of tourism. Email: jochen@indiana.edu

Tove I. Dahl is an educational psychologist and Professor in the Department of

Psychology at the University of Tromsø, Norway. Cross-cultural encounters

have long been the focus of her academic work – most recently through the

Norwegian Research Council’s Northern InSights programme and her work at

the Concordia Language Villages. Email: tove.dahl@uit.no

Graham M.S. Dann has been researching tourist motivation and such allied topics

as tourism promotion for the past four decades. He has been recognized for his

contribution to their understanding by the award of a higher doctorate. He is a

founder member of the International Academy for the Study of Tourism and

of the research committee on international tourism of the International

Sociological Association. Email: dann_graham@yahoo.co.uk

Frédéric Dimanche is Professor of Marketing and Director of the Centre for

Tourism Management at SKEMA Business School on the French Riviera. His

research interests include tourist behaviour and destination/tourism

organization management and marketing. Frédéric is a past President of the

Travel and Tourism Research Association Europe. Email: frederic.dimanche@

skema.edu

Monica Hanefors has more than 35 years’ experience in teaching tourism and

hospitality in Sweden and elsewhere. She has wide experience as a writer,

educator and consultant and has published a range of articles and books on

tourism and hospitality. Her research interests explore aspects of tourist

behaviour, gourmet travel and tour employees’ performance. Email: monica_

hanefors@yahoo.se

Ann Heidi Hansen is a PhD Fellow at Bodø Graduate School of Business,

University of Nordland, Norway. Her research interests are tourism experiences

and consumer immersion. She has also been teaching a course in Experience

Design at the University of Nordland. Email: ann.heidi.hansen@uin.no

Robert J. Harrington is the 21st Century Endowed Chair and Professor in

Hospitality at the University of Arkansas, Fayetteville, USA. He is Editor-in￾Chief for the Journal of Culinary Science & Technology and has published in the

areas of hospitality strategic management, culinary innovation, culinary

tourism, and food and wine. Email: rharring@uark.edu

Øystein Jensen is Professor in Marketing and Tourism at Bodø Graduate School

of Business, University of Nordland and at Norwegian School of Hotel

Management, University of Stavanger, Norway. He has a PhD in Marketing

from Aalborg Business School in Denmark. He has been leader of the tourism

research program Northern Insights, funded by the Norwegian Research

Council, and been involved in several other projects on tourism, marketing and

development. His main research interests involve exchange relationships,

attraction development and local sustainable tourism development. Email:

oje@uin.no

Tor Korneliussen is Professor of Marketing at Bodø Graduate School of Business,

University of Nordland, Norway. His research interests are business performance,

Contributors ix

products and product perceptions and information search. He has published in

journals such as Industrial Marketing Management, International Journal of

Advertising and Journal of Business Research. Email: Tor.Korneliussen@uin.no

Young-Sook Lee is Senior Lecturer at the Department of Tourism, Sport and

Hotel Management, Griffi th University, Australia. Her research interests

include East Asian tourism approached from cultural philosophies, sociological

and literary perspectives. Email: young-sook.lee@griffi th.edu.au

Vincent P. Magnini is Associate Professor and undergraduate program coordinator

in the Department of Hospitality and Tourism Management at Virginia Tech

University in the USA. Email: magnini@vt.edu

Line Mathisen is a PhD candidate in the Department of Business and Tourism,

Finnmark University College, Norway with a specialization in tourism

marketing. Her research interests include marketing and consumer behaviour.

More specifi cally, her graduate work examines the eff ects of storytelling, and

storytelling in interaction processes. Email: line.mathisen@hifm.no

Lena Mossberg is Professor of Marketing in the School of Business, Economics

and Law at the University of Gothenburg, Sweden and also Professor II at the

University of Nordland, Norway. Her interests include tourist behaviour and

she has published several articles on guide performance. She has been involved

in several international tourism and marketing programmes, not least in her

capacity as tourism management expert for the UN and the EU. Email: lena.

mossberg@handels.gu.se

Fevzi Okumus is Professor at the University of Central Florida, USA and the

Editor of the International Journal of Contemporary Hospitality Management

(IJCHM). His research areas include strategy implementation, competitive

advantage, crisis management, experience marketing and destination

marketing. He has published widely in top-tier journals and has over 160

publications (journal articles, books, book chapters, conference presentations

and reports). Email: Fevzi.Okumus@ucf.edu

Nina K. Prebensen is Professor of Marketing at School of Business and

Economics, UiT, Norway. Her research interests include consumer experience

value, destination marketing and business strategy. She leads a work package of

six projects in the research programme ‘Service Innovation and Tourist

Experiences in the High North: Th e Co-Creation of Values for Consumers,

Firms and the Tourism Industry’. Email: nina.prebensen@uit.no

Bruce Prideaux is Professor of Marketing and Tourism Management at James

Cook University, Australia. His current research interests include tourism

transport, climatic change, agri-tourism, ecotourism and military heritage. He

has published seven books, over 200 papers, chapters and conference papers on

a range of tourism issues and currently supervises seven PhD students. Email:

bruce.prideaux@jcu.edu.au

Haywantee Ramkissoon holds two doctoral degrees in Tourism and in

Environmental Psychology. She is Senior Lecturer and currently a research

fellow at Monash University, Australia. She has published in leading journals

such as Annals of Tourism Research, Tourism Management, Journal of Travel

Research, Journal of Sustainable Tourism, Tourism Analysis. Email: haywantee.

ramkissoon@monash.edu

x Contributors

Kasey Roach was an undergraduate research assistant in the Department of

Hospitality and Tourism Management at Virginia Tech University in the USA.

Email: kmr2840@vt.edu

Zvi Schwartz is Professor and the J. Willard and Alice S. Marriott Senior Faculty

Fellow for Hospitality Finance and Revenue Management in the Department

of Hospitality and Tourism Management at Virginia Tech University, USA.

His research aims to advance the forecasting, control and monitoring

components of hotel revenue management systems. Email: zvi@vt.edu

M. Joseph Sirgy is a management psychologist and Professor of Marketing, and

Virginia Real Estate Research Fellow at Virginia Polytechnic Institute and

State University, USA. He has published extensively in the area of marketing,

business ethics and quality of life. Email: sirgy@vt.edu

Gerardo R. Ungson is the Y.F. Chang Endowed Chair and Professor of

International Business at San Francisco State University, USA. His teaching

and research areas are global strategy, strategic alliances, poverty alleviation and

Asian business, and he has co-authored six books. Email: bungson@sfsu.edu

Muzaff er Uysal is Professor of Tourism in the Department of Hospitality and

Tourism Management – Pamplin College of Business, Virginia Tech, USA.

His current research interests centre on tourism demand/supply interaction,

tourism development and marketing, and QOL research in tourism. Email:

samil@vt.edu

Akan Yanık graduated from the Communication Faculty of Ege University in 2007

and completed his master’s degree at the same university. While studying in the

faculty, he won nine awards including the IAA award in 2003, Golden Compass

Awards of Turkey Public Relations Association in 2004 and 2005, Microsoft

Imagine Cup in 2006 and other national awards. He became a Microsoft System

Engineer (MCSE) and while studying worked in the Whirlpool (Vestel)

Investigation & Development Laboratory. He has focused on information

communication technologies and realized both theoretical publications and

practical award-winning projects such as Holosbanking Project (Holographic

VIP Customer Service) and TEMOC Project (Terrestrial Monitoring Central).

Since 2009 he has been both a lecturer and PhD graduate student at the Adnan

Menderes University, Turkey. Email: akanyanik@hotmail.com

Xiaojuan ( Jady) Yu is Lecturer in the School of Tourism Management, Sun Yat￾Sen University, China. She received her PhD in Recreation, Sport and Tourism

from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, USA. Her current

research interests include tourist behaviour and co-creation of experience. She

has published in journals such as Tourism Analysis and Tourism Review

International. Email: yuxiaojuan214@163.com

Atila Yüksel is Professor of Marketing at the University of Adnan Menderes, Turkey.

He has published in the Journal of Tourism Management, Journal of Hospitality

and Tourism Research, Journal of Travel and Tourism Marketing, Cornell Quarterly,

Annals of Tourism Research, Journal of Quality Assurance in Tourism and Hospitality

and Journal of Vacation Marketing. He has co-authored four books and is editor

of the Journal of Travel and Tourism Research. Professor Yuksel’s research interests

are in tourism planning, destination management, services marketing, social web

and customer relationships. Email: atilayuksel@gmail.com

xi

Preface

Th e roles of hosts and guests are changing continuously. Th is is a consequence of

technological innovations and developments, but also of people’s changing

mindsets: how and why tourists travel, what tourists value during a tourist journey,

and how this value may be produced and consumed before, during and after a trip.

Value creation as a theoretical construct, as well as a practical approach, is debated.

Th is book attempts to outline value creation in tourist experiences, theoretically and

practically, in order to obtain new understandings and models to help identify how

value creation is changing within the tourism industry and demonstrate ways in

which both tourists and settings can proactively take part in this change, thus

becoming a vital element in its success.

Th e traditional view of value as something produced by one actor and

consumed by another has been strongly debated in marketing and tourism literature

over the last two decades. New logics supersede the traditional perspective of

production and consumption as separate entities, and propose that the customer

always partakes in value creation processes, and that without the customer no value

is actually generated. Th is becomes even more relevant in the hedonic consumption

of tourism goods and services. Th e fundamental idea is that various needs of

consumers may lead to various degrees of participation in diff erent phases of value

creation. Tourist consumption is about travelling for personal enjoyment, which

generates hedonic value for the customer. Th e customer participates in value

creation because it is appealing and attractive.

Experience value can be created and/or co-created by the tourist alone, with

fellow tourists, and/or with the service provider in a certain context or environment.

However, in tourism, the tourist has to be present in the experience process for the

value to be recognized. Current research provides a multitude of approaches to

value creation and co-creation and these approaches may comprise a variety of

characteristics, and imply others, in attempting to outline the essence of the

xii Preface

concept. Th e wide variety of contributions in the present book, in terms of focus,

scale and level of abstraction, has resulted in a complex setting of defi nitions,

perspectives and interpretations of how tourists as customers create value alone,

jointly with fi rms and with other actors. By including two major aspects of value

creation, that is psychological and physiological aspects of a tourist journey, the

book puts forward fundamental ideas on how to acknowledge and handle tourist

experience as a value-based construct and personal narratives. Th e tourist’s interest,

involvement, motivation and partaking in value creation aff ect the tourist’s value

perceptions and future intentions. Furthermore, the tourist fi rm and service

providers may enhance the fi rm value through developing a platform for enhanced

experience value for the tourist.

Th e complex nature of the value creation concept may threaten its theoretical

development. Th is book thus aims to provide an analytical and systematic

clarifi cation of the approaches and suggests a shared understanding of the

diff erences, providing both tourism marketing scholars and practitioners with new

and practical knowledge with which to increase the relevance of the concept to

tourism fi rms and organizations. Furthermore, this book is an attempt to analyse

the various factors aff ecting value creation in tourism from physiological and

psychological perspectives. We hope that readers will fi nd the text insightful and

challenging.

Nina K. Prebensen

Joseph S. Chen

Muzaff er Uysal

© CAB International 2014. Creating Experience Value in Tourism

(eds N.K. Prebensen et al.) 1

1 Co-creation of Tourist Experience:

Scope, Defi nition and Structure

NINA K. PREBENSEN,

1 JOSEPH S. CHEN2 AND MUZAFFER UYSAL3

1School of Business and Economics, UiT, Norway; 2Indiana University at

Bloomington, USA; 3Pamplin College of Business, Virginia Tech, Blacksburg, USA

Tourist Experience

A vacation trip is more often voluntarily and willingly performed to meet personal

and hedonic needs; not because the tourists have to, but because they want to.

Tourists participate in producing their vacation, before, during and after the journey,

through their time, eff ort and money, because the process of doing so is highly valued,

by themselves and relevant others. Th is simple but very important issue in tourist

experience creation denotes a foundational diff erence compared with traditional

products and services people buy in order to complete a task or for other instrumental

reasons, i.e. to be transported, to have their apartment cleaned or to get medical help

to get well from an illness. When tourists choose to spend money, time and eff ort to

engage in activities of interest, they do so to produce an enjoyable moment of time,

whatever their primary aims, motivation, interest, involvement, experiences and

skills. Th is makes the hedonic side of tourist consumption of great importance, and

so the focus on understanding tourist presence and participation in enjoying, playing

and partaking relevant to the production of psychological well-being is essential. Th e

tourism industry not only needs to focus on quality standards, but also needs to

recognize and address the hedonic reasons for travelling in order to be able to

facilitate and help tourists to fully enjoy and complete these motivations.

Experiences and their meanings usually appeal to tourists’ high-order needs,

such as novelty, excitement and enjoyment, prestige, socialization and learning, and

contribute to the enhancement of a sense of well-being. Ongoing research in

academia and the popular press indicates that today’s travellers are gaining more

power and control over what goes into the nature of tourism products as experience,

with which travellers also construct their own narratives (Binkhorst and Dekker,

2009). Th e construction of narratives may be infl uenced by the extent to which the

interaction takes place between tourists and the setting (or tangible place or the

experience environment), as well as the interaction between local inhabitants and

fellow tourists (Prebensen and Foss, 2011). Th e nature of this interaction provides

2 N.K. Prebensen, J.S. Chen and M. Uysal

the core of tourist experiences (Walls and Wang, 2011) and denotes enhanced

experience value for the tourist handling various situations and people (Prebensen

and Foss, 2011).

As implied, the experience environment, setting and/or sphere are more than the

physical stage. It includes consumers, producers and the right to use amenities for a

period of time (Bitner, 1992; Walls and Wang, 2011). Binkhorst and Dekker (2009)

refer to this as a tourism experience network away from the home environment

where the tourist as a participant is surrounded by a unique experience network of all

stakeholders. Th is approach places the human being in the centre and considers

tourism as an experience network in which various stakeholders co-create in order to

engage in tourism experiences. Th is signifi es the importance of the setting in which

tourism activities take place to create value and produce experiences. Readiness of

the individual, in terms of physical ability and capability, competency, willingness to

work with others and the opportunity to participate, is also a signifi cant variable that

may aff ect the extent to which a prospective tourist as consumer may take part in

creating value in the setting as much as the setting is conducive to facilitating and

creating value (Mathis, 2013).

Tourist Experience and Co-creation

Creating value in tourism experiences is greatly focused on the role of tourist as

consumer and the destination setting and the service company as the producer or

provider in the co-creation process. Grönroos (2006, p. 324) stresses that it is not the

tourists who get opportunities to engage themselves in the service provider’s process,

but the service provider who can create opportunities to engage itself with the

tourists’ value-generating process. Th us, the elements of the setting or experience

dimensions should involve the tourist emotionally, physically, spiritually and

intellectually (Mossberg, 2007). Another important point that needs to be mentioned

is about how experiences appeal to higher order needs of satisfaction and motivation.

If the setting and producer create an environment where the tourist becomes

co-producer, then the perceived value that arises is likely to improve the quality of

the vacation experiences, thus contributing to tourist well-being.

Tourists may perceive their vacation experiences diff erently based on a number

of antecedents, as indicated above, and subsequent variations in their ability and

desire to cope and co-create in the experience moment depending on situational

aspects (Prebensen and Foss, 2011).

When discussing creating or co-creating value in tourism experiences, one may

also like to see some brief discussion on defi nitional issues. We may start by using

Frondizi’s (1971) question: ‘Are things valuable because we value them, or do we

value them because they are valuable?’ Th e simple reaction may be that things are

valuable because we value them. Th is is because diff erent people value diff erent

things.

Th e idea that value is something that someone produces for the consumer to buy

and value afterwards is strongly debated by Vargo and Lusch (2004, 2006). Vargo

and Lusch claim that ‘Th e customer is always a co-creator of value. Th ere is no value

until an off ering is used – experience and perception are essential to value