Anti-shopping tourism: a new concept in the field of consumption

Abstract

In this article, based on qualitative research in Hungary, we propose a new phrase for the field of tourist consumption. Our notion ‘anti-shopping tourism’ refers to the resistant attitude towards consumption and spending money during shopping-related tours. The research discussed in the paper analyses participants’ motivations, attitudes and behaviour on one-day coach trips that include various programmes, for example, sightseeing, lunch, spa visits and even a range of gifts, for a very low price, in exchange for participation in a professional sales show during the trip. Our main goal is to explain and, from an economic and anthropological point of view, conceptualise this form of tourist attitude, and to show how this unique way of travel may be situated in a certain historical setting in Hungary, more than two decades after the collapse of the socialist regime. In order to understand how the participating individuals negotiated this unique form of travel that exists in a grey zone of the institutionalised travel industry, notions such as debt, sacrifice, resistance, gift, seduction and informal contract are discussed and connected to the phenomenon.