Abstract
The relations between tourism and luxury and fashion industry are subject to significant changes because of the quantitative and qualitative discontinuity introduced by the growth of the outbound flows of Chinese tourists and the importance of shopping in their travel experience. The most important implications concern the emergence of a new global market space (the “Sixth Continent”) and of new patterns of integration between the two industries.
Highlights
In recent years both literature and practice of management have been discovering the multifold relations between tourism and shopping, especially as far as luxury and fashion are concerned
On the other hand, ‘shopping tourism’ is defined as “a contemporary form of tourism fostered by individuals for whom purchasing goods outside of their usual environment is a determining factor in their decision to travel” (UNWTO, 2014, p. 13)
Shopping tourism finds its most ‘extreme’ experience in the setting up of tourist destinations centered on shopping, like in the widely discussed benchmark case of West Edmonton Hall, the ‘new generation mall’ in Canada (Jansen-Verbeke, 1991), or in the cases of outlet villages, a growing phenomenon in Europe and especially in Italy since the 1990s, where “a retail venue that has become the attraction site for shopping tourism redefines uses, functions and images of the local area in which it is built” (Rabbiosi, 2011)
Summary
In recent years both literature and practice of management have been discovering the multifold relations between tourism and shopping, especially as far as luxury and fashion are concerned. Of buying a beautiful and expensive item (often to ‘show off’), but it has an experiential dimension, becoming a part of a new lifestyle, improving the quality of life This means a new focus on spending in sectors such as travel, wellness, house appliances and culture in addition to the fashion and other classical luxury sectors, with a delayed convergence with the global trend towards ‘experiential luxury’ (Rovai, 2014; Abtan et al, 2014). After decades of uniformism and extremely regulated consumption habits, China’s love for luxury cannot be just interpreted as the result of a convergence towards westernized, global patterns of consumption, but reflects a deeper re-appropriation of elements that are key in Chinese culture and are nurtured by a centuries-long history of luxury (Rovai, 2016). Different sources confirm that Chinese tourists tend to be quite price-conscious on items such as the flight ticket or overnight stays, and tend to allocate a greater share (approximately 30 - 35%) of their budget to shopping (Uren, 2009; UNWTO, 2014)
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