ABSTRACT
This chapter develops an understanding of the shopping experience itself. In contrast to previous chapters which have provided a rich array of information on the contexts in which tourists shop, the material considered in the following sections focuses on the design and planning of the visitor experiences. The core elements of this chapter are highlighted in Figure 7.1. It will be argued throughout this chapter that the shopping experience is a hybrid of visitors’ involvement in and evaluations of the available activities, products, services and places engineered by the retailers and local authorities (Tosun, et al. 2007). It is not a passive experience, either physically or cognitively. Shopping is a recreational activity that involves planning, looking, touching, browsing, thinking and buying. The nature of the experience is constructed by visitors in the sense that their motives for attending shopping settings infl uence their attention, length of stay and behavioural routines. A starting point for the consideration of the visitors’ experiences lies with the topic of visitor motivation. There is some direct material assessing and considering this issue and some less direct but interesting information from market segmentation studies. Some of this material on market segmentation studies and visitor motives for shopping was discussed in Chapter 1 of this volume. A select sample of that material and some additional material is presented in the following section with a specifi c focus on the motivation for types of visitor experiences. These research efforts will be developed and discussed in the fi rst part of this chapter. Subsequent sections of the chapter will review some of the processes and opportunities which can be implemented to engage visitors and fashion their experiences.
