ABSTRACT
During the last half century, retail design along with tourism marketing and distribution has grown dramatically in cultural importance. The economic and social changes that have triggered this are well documented, including increases in consumer spending and leisure time as well as, at least in part, being due to the introduction of the Internet. The latter development has resulted in an increased power of consumer in making choices based upon a new transparency in the marketplace. Furthermore, as competition has increased, owing to multichannel marketing and product distribution, consumers seek new roles to play in the changing retail and tourist landscape. This chapter presents a new conceptual framework for using the planned event to create temporary retail opportunities that may lead to greater sustainable tourist and visitor development. The chapter identifies the role of the emerging tourism festival retail marketplace in integrating the live planned event, serving as a catalyst for developing customer relationship marketing beyond the temporal, sensual experience of a one-off attraction. Finally, three mini-case studies are presented that demonstrate how many retail events are shifting from transactions to multisensory experiences that are often well integrated in festivals and other live events; and the chapter concludes with recommendations for building capacity in the tourist retail sector through the development of sensual temporal marketplaces.
