Experiential Offerings Research Articles

Brewing happiness: Is it just about coffee or more?

This study aims to provide empirical evidence of the important role of product diversity and service quality on consumer’s perceived value and its subsequent influence on consumer satisfaction. The largest local coffee shop brands in Indonesia have been selected as the focal points of this study due to their amalgamation of traditional and modern flavors and the unique experiential offerings they provide to their customers. Notably, the novelty of this study resides in its intention to bridge a significant gap in the existing literature. Prior studies have rarely explored the factors associated with customer satisfaction within the context of local coffee shop services with the mediation role of perceived value and antecedents of product variability. The study adopts a quantitative research approach, utilizing a 5-point Likert scale in a survey-based methodology. A total of 262 respondents, comprising a diverse pool of coffee lovers and enthusiasts, actively participated in this survey. To examine and assess the hypotheses posited in this study, we utilized the SPSS macro-PROCESS (Model 4). The study's findings indicate a significant positive correlation between product and service diversity and customer value. This suggests that by offering a diverse range of innovative products and services, coffee shops can enhance the perceived value for customers, ultimately leading to higher satisfaction levels. Interestingly, this study has uncovered a notable difference in the role of service quality as a primary driver of customer satisfaction, in contrast to prior findings suggesting that service quality is merely one of several factors contributing to satisfaction.

Offering Memories to Sell Goods? Pricing and Welfare Implications of Experiential Retail

Problem definition: In an environment where consumers’ rising valuation of Instagrammable memories drives their spending from products to experiences, retailers offer experiences to attract consumers back to their stores. Yet, it is not obvious under which settings consumers can benefit from these experiences and raise retailers’ profits. Methodology/results: We use a random utility model for consumer choice in both monopoly and duopoly settings. For the latter, we pose a game-theoretic model to analyze the equilibrium prices, profits, and consumer welfare for various problem cases. We show that medium-quality experiences can lower the product sales and store traffic below the level when no experience is offered. Sufficiently low- or high-quality experiences overcome this issue, making the consumers better off. Yet, the former presents the only profitable option when a single retailer in the market offers an experience. In contrast, when both retailers adopt experiences, low-quality experiences may not be profitable, and the retailers would need to adopt even higher-quality experiences, which lead to a “win-win-win” outcome for the two retailers and consumers. A fee structure for the experience elevates retailer profits but can turn stores into outlets where consumers visit to purchase experiences and not products. When experiential retailing is the common practice in the market, it enables “win-win-win” outcomes when free experiences fail. Managerial implications: Being the first to study this new retail format, our results contribute to the ongoing debate on the settings under which experiential offerings are beneficial for the retailers and consumers and highlight that there is no one-size-fits-all strategy. Our results show that experiences affect main product sales in nonobvious ways, especially in competitive markets. In a (post-)pandemic world where retailers try to attract consumers back to stores, we offer insights that can guide retailers in the process.Supplemental Material: The online appendix is available at https://doi.org/10.1287/msom.2021.0339 .

Economics of Experiential Consumption In a Rural Heritage Destination

As markets evolve in the era of the experience economy, experiences have become more meaningful and are an essential part of tourism. Several studies have found that higher expenditures are a positive outcome of a successful and satisfying tourism experience. The purpose of this study is to examine the economic potential of staged experiential offerings in a rural community: Wickenburg, Arizona, a typical western mining and ranching heritage community with a thriving tourism economy. A content analysis of the community's official tourism website and attraction websites, and an onsite survey of visitors are the primary data sources. The results indicate that somewhat moderate demand exists for experiential consumption. They also reiterate the crossover significance of emotional and cognitive attributes and support the cognitive theory of emotions. This study contributes to the existing body of knowledge and suggests that emotional and cognitive aspects of experiential consumption should be considered simultaneously for their economic value.

Evaluating the Temporal Dynamics of a Structured Experience: Real-Time Skin Conductance and Experience Reconstruction Measures

Structured experience (SE) providers continuously evaluate and improve their experiential offerings to make them more memorable. Arguably, the temporal dynamics of the emotions in an experience have a crucial influence on its memorability. Traditional post-experience evaluation procedures tend to ignore these temporal dynamics, thus offering imprecise feedback for providers on exactly when and where to optimize their experiential offerings. In this paper, we use two methods as a tool for evaluating how closely the lived experience of a SE follows the experience as intended by the provider: real-time skin conductance (SC) and experience reconstruction measures (ERMs). We demonstrate that both SC and ERMs are significantly related to intended experience. This link was found to be stronger for later sections of the experience than for earlier sections. In addition, SC and ERMs appear to be useful tools to assess the effectiveness of design interventions, thus providing valuable feedback for SE providers.

Hamlet Live: the 7 I’s Experiential Strategy Framework for heritage visitor attractions

ABSTRACT In an increasingly competitive market for tourist destinations, visitor attractions play a key role in enticing visitors to the destination, and as such must continually develop new extraordinary experiential offerings to keep visitors coming. The Renaissance castle of Kronborg, a Danish heritage visitor attraction and the setting of Shakespeare’s Hamlet, has shown the way by staging Hamlet Live, an interactive theatrical experience. Its success is due to the professional actors’ co-creative performances and improvisations. In this study, based on observations, semi-structured interviews and thematic analysis of TripAdvisor reviews, we identify and describe seven interconnected elements that have made Hamlet Live successful in terms of revenue and visitor satisfaction. These elements form an experiential strategy framework that other heritage visitor attractions could use to create extraordinary experiences. We provide recommendations on which types of heritage visitor attractions could replicate the achievements of Kronborg’s Hamlet Live.

Understanding the Factors Influencing the Leisure Tourism Behavior of Visually Impaired Travelers: An Empirical Study in China.

This study looks at the real-world problems which vision impaired individuals face when they travel. More specifically, this study aims to explore the main factors influencing the leisure tourism behavior of visually impaired individuals. Based on in-depth semi-structured interviews with 26 visually impaired respondents, this study identifies six main factors impacting on the leisure tourism behavior of visually impaired individuals including: tourism products and services, personal psychological factors, social support, community support, personal socio-economic factors, and barrier-free environments. Findings show that visually impaired travelers have strong requirements for auditory, tactile, and physical participation. Support factors such as travel companions/escorts, tour organizers specifically targeting their experiential offerings at the visually impaired, and an accessible environment are important considerations for visually impaired travelers. Findings also show that visually impaired individuals participate in leisure tourism to enhance their own abilities, relieve pressures on their families, break stereotypes associated with the visually impaired, and promote the need for greater tourism development specifically targeting visually impaired travelers. This study also proposes a theoretical model outlining the factors influencing leisure tourism of visually impaired people.

밀레니얼 축제방문객의 축제경험이 축제에서 느끼는 행복감 축제애착도, 그리고 충성도에 미치는 영향

The purpose of this study is to identify the cultural festival experiential attributes, and to examine the impact of these festival experiential attributes on Millennial festival visitors’ behaviors such as happiness, festival attachment, and festival loyalty. A research model was proposed based on the previous studies and the mode was tested with data from 256 Millennial festival visitors at the cultural festival. Exploratory factor analysis was conducted and identified entertainment, escape, education, and esthetic as cultural festival experiential attributes. Subsequent confirmatory factor analysis and structural equation modelling analysis revealed that two of four festival experiential attributes (i.e., entertainment and escape) play significant roles in inducing Millennial festival visitors’ happiness, festival attachment, and loyalty. The findings of this study will help festival practitioners who wish to enhance experiential offerings according to the tastes and preference desired by Millennial festival visitors.

Application of one health approach in training at Makerere University: experiences from the one health workforce project in Uganda

The interconnections of humans, domestic animals, wildlife and the environment have increasingly become complex, requiring innovative and collaborative approaches (One Health approach) for addressing global health challenges. One Health is a multidisciplinary and multi-sectoral collaborative approach to human, animal, plant and environmental health. The role of academia in training professionals oriented in One Health is critical in building a global workforce capable of enhancing synergies of various sectors in improving health.Makerere University, Uganda has implemented pre-service capacity building initiatives aimed to foster One Health competencies among students who are future practitioners. In addition to incorporating the One Health concept in didactic curricula, Student One Health Innovation Clubs, undergraduate field placements in 11 demonstration sites, graduate fellowships, small grants to support research and innovations, and cross-college collaborative training approaches have greatly aided the assimilation of One Health into the fabric of university offerings. Partnerships with government ministries, private sector and international agencies were initiated to benefit the students, as well as chart a path for experiential learning and in-service offerings in the future.One major challenge, however, has been the tendency to focus on infectious diseases, especially zoonoses, with less consideration of other health issues. The opportunity for improvement, nonetheless, lies in the increasing emerging and re-emerging health concerns including epidemics, environmental pollution and related challenges which justify the need for countries and institutions to focus on building and strengthening multidisciplinary health systems.

The effectiveness of advertising images in promoting experiential offerings: An emotional response approach

This research examines the role of advertising images in promoting experiential offerings. In particular, it investigates the congruence effect between the emotional responses evoked by advertising images and experiential offerings on consumers’ purchase likelihood in the tourism context. This congruence effect is tested in a series of four experimental studies using different advertising stimuli and manipulations of perceived certainty associated with the offerings. The findings show that advertising images eliciting awe have a more positive impact on purchase likelihood when combined with an experiential offering communicating a low level of certainty, whereas advertising images eliciting contentment have a more positive impact on purchase likelihood when combined with an experiential offering communicating a high level of certainty. Both the theoretical and managerial implications of the findings are discussed.

Experiences and value perceptions of an ecotourism trip – an empirical study of outbound Chinese tourists

ABSTRACT Ecotourism is a fast-growing tourism sector, but the value of ecotourism trips from tourists’ perspective has seldom been studied, which led to the current study that examined outbound Chinese tourists’ value perceptions of ecotourism trips. Data were collected from Chinese tourists on bus tours to a well-known Australian ecotourism site over an one-year period. The study suggested tourists’ experiences impacted on perceived ecotour value in a number of ways. In particular, all experience dimensions influenced one or more of the five value dimensions examined, while entertainment, relating, and education experiences influenced each of the five value dimensions. The study offers important implications for both ecotourism researchers and operators attempting to understand and manage the key experiential offerings that could help maximise value to international tourists.

Reconceptualizing the Hierarchical Service Quality Model: The Case of Agritourism Events

To enhance the success of agritourism events and festivals, identified as important contributors to economic development in rural communities, this study investigated factors leading to revisit intentions toward these tourism activities. Taking an experience economy approach, the 4Es (educational, entertainment, escapist, and esthetic experiences) were used as alternative measures of outcome quality as part of a 4E-based reconceptualized hierarchical service quality model (HSQM). Data were collected from 529 respondents at three agritourism events in the state of Iowa. Structural equation modeling (SEM) revealed that overall service quality was comprised of all three dimensions of HSQM (interaction quality, physical environment quality, and outcome quality as indicated by the 4Es) and overall service quality was shown to be an antecedent of visitor satisfaction, which consequently led to revisit intention. Additionally, SEM results demonstrated the suitability of the hypothesized 4E-based HSQM model to explain the variance in overall service quality at agritourism events. Thus, this study provides an innovative theoretical foundation for future research investigating service quality, and suggests strategies that marketers can use to effectively enhance experiential offerings for visitors at agritourism events.

Clinical Legal Education and the Replication of Hierarchy

Clinical legal education is now a significant and widely touted feature of every law schools’ curriculum. The 2008 recession, which resulted in fewer law jobs and fewer applicants, spurred law schools to beef up their experiential offerings, both in response to the call for “practice ready” graduates and to enhance law schools’ appeal to potential applicants. This essay explores two aspects of collateral damage that have resulted from the growth and institutionalization of clinical education. They both stem from the replication of hierarchies that have long existed in law school faculties and in the legal profession in general. First, the expansion of clinical offerings has not resulted in more clinical tenure-track positions—their number has steadily decreased. Instead, hiring has been largely through short-term fellowship, visitor or staff attorney appointments, or at best long-term contract eligible positions, without voting rights on the issues that shape the future of the institution—appointments and tenure. Thus, instead of increased integration of clinical education into the academy, a new underclass has been created within faculties, without job security or long-term academic prospects. Second, the growth of clinical education has not been consistent with its original programmatic goals of serving under-represented groups with critical legal needs. Instead, clinical education has succumbed to the popular demand for more “glamourous” practices settings, as seen by the huge growth of start-up, entrepreneurial and intellectual property clinics and the reduction in housing, government benefits and family law offerings. Thus, clinical education is replicating the legal practice hierarchies that leave poverty law at the bottom. This essay ends with recommendations to ensure that clinics are staffed in a non- exploitative manner that respects the career aspirations of junior colleagues and that clinical curricular decisions keep as a priority instilling the social justice values that have been the hallmark of clinical education.

Reflecting on reflection: a dialogue across the hemispheres on teaching and assessing reflective practice in clinical legal education

ABSTRACTWhy is it so important for law students to learn to be reflective? What do we mean by “reflective practice” in the context of legal education? How do we actually teach reflective practice in experiential offerings such as clinics and externships? Finally, how do we assess law students’ reflective work? These questions continue to challenge those of us who strive to teach reflective practice as a core set of skills, including many who view ourselves as clinical legal educators. In this article, two seasoned clinical law teachers who have directed experiential courses and programme in different countries engage in a friendly dialogue about these and other fundamental questions about teaching law students to become reflective practitioners. Together, they offer their collective wisdom regarding the “why”, the “what”, and the “how” of teaching reflective practice in clinical and experiential legal education.

Developing an Instrument to Capture Multifaceted Visitor Experiences: The DoVE Adjective Checklist

Understanding visitor experiences is an important focus for visitor research in attractions such as museums, zoos, and heritage sites because the visitor experience is the core product of the interaction between the visitor and the activities, events, and environments they encounter. This article describes the development of an instrument designed to capture multiple facets of the visitor experience using a simple and unobtrusive adjective checklist. The checklist has been tested and used at a range of attractions, including museums, art galleries, science centers, zoos, and aquariums. The instrument allows visitors’ responses to the experiential offerings of each site to be captured and graphically displayed, as well as providing individual measures on 15 dimensions. The instrument can be used to support further research and theory development as well as exhibit design and evaluation. Examples of such applications are discussed.

How and when taking pictures undermines the enjoyment of experiences

AbstractThe consumption of experiences (as opposed to products) has seen an increasing amount of research attention in recent years. A key aspect of the experiential consumption journey is how the experience is consumed. For instance, people almost invariably take pictures during highly enjoyable experiences such as vacations or important family events. Although past research has suggested that taking pictures may enhance the enjoyment of moderately enjoyable experiences, the effect of picture taking on the real‐time enjoyment of highly enjoyable experiences is not clear. To address this matter, the authors investigate whether taking pictures affects consumers’ enjoyment of highly enjoyable hedonic experiences. A series of laboratory studies demonstrate that taking pictures (compared with not taking pictures) can decrease enjoyment of highly enjoyable experiences. This study suggests that, by constantly striving to document their experiences, consumers may unwittingly fail to enjoy those experiences to the fullest. These results have implications for how firms may best stage experiential offerings to enhance their customers’ experiences.

The Development of Undergraduate International Business Practicums in Small Business Schools: An Experiential Learning Framework

ABSTRACTThe value of the inclusion of experiential learning opportunities in international business education has been well established in the literature. We set out to examine industry-identified skills and experiences that could lead to enhanced employability and early career performance. Through our extensive review of theory, empirical work, leading programs, practicum channels, and our own qualitative study, we proposed frameworks to help guide small business schools best structure their undergraduate international business experiential learning offerings. Specifically, we suggest the establishment of tracks or concentrations with supplemental skill focus, emphasis on foreign language proficiency, and requiring at least two international internship or service learning practicums, preferably abroad, that include mini-consulting projects, presentations, and deliverables.

What to Say to Patrons About Buying Tickets Again? Modelling a Modern Relationship for Traditional Performing Arts

Understanding patrons’ repurchase intentions is a key area of focus for marketers, given its effect on survival and growth in competitive environments. Four types of relationships based on patron’s satisfaction, product preference, product involvement, induced emotions and repurchasing intention were modelled to illustrate how current consumption influenced the repurchase intentions of performing arts patrons. An empirical study on an East Asian traditional culture performance from 671 patrons was conducted by using structural equation modelling (SEM) techniques. The result indicated that patrons’ satisfaction was not the most direct determinant of their own repurchase intention, as initially theorized. Instead, patron preferences and involvement are the most proximal predictors of repurchase intent. Performing arts represent a leisure market sector that provides educational, entertainment and experiential services. Arts marketers can identify the factors that influence the patrons’ repurchase responses to improve their’ inherently experiential offerings. This study represents a sophisticated nature of the relationship with theatre patrons and offers theoretical and practical mediating attributes for arts marketing managers to consider in communication.

Investigating Tourists’ Fun-Eliciting Process toward Tourism Destination Sites: An Application of Cognitive Appraisal Theory

Previous studies have shown that destinations must distinguish themselves from competitors and develop experiential offerings that deliver memorable value to consumers. More and more consumers want experiential service during their travel. Despite the gradual increase in research on experiential consumption in tourism, no consensus has yet emerged on what factors of experiential value lead to positive behavioral outcomes in consumer cognitive appraisals. This study used the cognitive appraisal theory (CAT) to investigate the determinants of consumer emotional responses, as well as how evoked emotions affect behavior in tourism. Study findings contribute to the existing body of literature on the ability of CAT to illustrate how the experiential value of “fun” influences on-the-spot behavior. This study also helps tourism destination marketers by providing a clear picture of how to elicit positive emotions among tourists for a tourism destination that leads to positive behavioral outcomes.

The path to mall patronage intentions is paved with 4E-based experiential value for Indian consumers

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to examine whether experiential offerings from two types of retailers play a significant role in consumer responses toward Indian malls. Specifically, this study examined the relationships between consumer perceptions of experience economy 4E constructs (i.e. educational, entertainment, escapist, and esthetic experiences) and experiential value associated with merchandise retailers and service retailers in Indian shopping malls, and between perceived experiential value and mall patronage intention.Design/methodology/approachA mall intercept survey conducted in two shopping malls in India resulted in 552 useable responses. Structural equation modeling was used to test the hypothesized relationships.FindingsExperience economy constructs (i.e. entertainment, escapist, and esthetic experiences) contributed to the experiential value associated with merchandise retailers and/or service retailers in the mall. Experiential value associated with both merchandise retailers and service retailers in the mall positively influenced mall patronage intention.Practical implicationsThe results have practical implications for mall retailers, mall managers, and mall developers; particular experiential strategies for both merchandise retailers and service retailers may improve patronage intentions toward the mall, which includes a measure of purchase intentions.Originality/valueAlthough academic articles support the idea that retailers can obtain benefits by offering experiences to consumers, this is the first study to empirically validate the role of specific consumer experiences, the 4Es, resulting from both merchandise retailers and service retailers, in a non-Western mall context on value creation for shoppers and the consequent influence on patronage intentions.

The irrepressible and uncontrollable urge: sex, experience, and consumption

ABSTRACTIn the face of innumerable marketing articles that provide safe, sanitized, and staid interpretations of sex, this research attempts, in the words of one notorious rock band, to put the X back in sex by exploring its naughty role in consumption. While the extant marketing literature has focused primarily on how sex influences both consumer acquisition and identity construction, less research has addressed the consumption of sex as an erotic practice, especially in non-sexual consumption contexts. Given the immersive nature of sex, we explore the relationship between sex and consumption via experiential offerings, and more specifically, through consumer participation in the spectacular themed attraction of Splash Mountain at Walt Disney World in Orlando, Florida. Utilizing the lens and style of the archetypal trickster, we tease out the symbolic and physical aspects of this attraction to reveal that sex potentially underlies both the narrative interpretation and bodily enjoyment of this ride.