Exploring Pine and Gilmore's Experience Economy in Tourism, Notas de aula de Marketing para Negócios (B2B)

Baixe Exploring Pine and Gilmore's Experience Economy in Tourism e outras Notas de aula em PDF para Marketing para Negócios (B2B), somente na Docsity! This article was downloaded by: [Nanyang Technological University] On: 28 April 2015, At: 19:24 Publisher: Routledge Informa Ltd Registered in England and Wales Registered Number: 1072954 Registered office: Mortimer House, 37-41 Mortimer Street, London W1T 3JH, UK Journal of Quality Assurance in Hospitality & Tourism Publication details, including instructions for authors and subscription information: http://www. tandfonline. com/ loi/ wgah2! Pine and Gilmore's Concept of Experience Economy and Its Dimensions: An Empirical Examination in Tourism Mehmet Mehmetoglu ? & Marit Engen * 2 Lillehammer University College, Tourism Department , Lillehammer, Norway Published online: 14 Oct 2011. To cite this article: Mehmet Mehmetoglu & Marit Engen (2011) Pine and Gilmore's Concept of Experience Economy and Its Dimensions: An Empirical Examination in Tourism, Journal of Quality Assurance in Hospitality & Tourism, 12:4, 237-255, DOI: 10.1080/ 1528008X.2011.541847 To linkto this article: hi PLEASE SCROLL DOWN FOR ARTICLE Taylor & Francis makes every effort to ensure the accuracy of all the information (the “Content”) contained in the publications on our platform. However, Taylor & Francis, our agents, and our licensors make no representations or warranties whatsoever as to the accuracy, completeness, or suitability for any purpose of the Content. Any opinions and views expressed in this publication are the opinions and views of the authors, and are not the views of or endorsed by Taylor & Francis. The accuracy of the Content should not be relied upon and should be independently verified with primary sources of information. 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Terms & Conditions of access and use can be found at http://www .tandfonline.com/page/terms- and-conditions Downloaded by [Nanyang Technological University] at 19:24 28 April 2015 Routledge Copyright O Taylor & Francis Group, LLC Tayice& Francs Broui ISSN: 1528-008X print/1528-0098 online DOI: 10.1080/1528008X.2011.541847 Journal of Quality Assurance in Hospitality & Tourism, 12:237-255, 2011 i Pine and Gilmore's Concept of Experience Economy and Its Dimensions: An Empirical Examination in Tourism MEHMET MEHMETOGLU and MARIT ENGEN Lillebammer University College, Tourism Department, Lillebammer, Norway The growing attention placed on experiences can be regarded as a mega-trend, and has given currency to the proposition that expe- riences function as a personal source of information for the stories people tell about their lives and are important for their selfpercep- tion. This view implies the significance of experiences of indivis action with a given product or visit. To as this assump- tion, we have made use of Pine and Gilmore's widely known model, and in so doing have empirically examined the applica- bility of their concept of an “experience economy” and its four dimensions (education, escapism, esthetics, and entertainment). The necessary data were collected from two tourism contexts, the Ice Music Festival and the Maibaugen Museum. The results indi- cate that Pine and Gilmore's model can further our understanding ofthe experience market. However, the findings show that different experiential dimensions influence the visitors” overall satisfaction in different contexts. For instance, while the dimension ofescapism has a significant effect on the visitors" overall satisfaction in the case of the Ice Music Festival, the dimension of education sig- nificantly influences the visitors” satisfaction at the Maibaugen Museum. The theoretical and practical implications of this study are also discussed. we would like to thank the Norwegian Research Council for funding the research project Innovation in the Tourism Industry (no. 194527/V10) of which this paper is part. We also thank our research colleagues Hans Holmengen, Christian Krogh, and Terje Slátten for their contribution to the design of the questionnaire used in the current study. Address correspondence to Mehmet Mehmetoglu, Lillethammer University College, Department of Tourism, 2604 Lillehammer, Norway. E-mail: mehmetQhil.no 237 Downloaded by [Nanyang Technological University] at 19:24 28 April 2015 240 M. Mebmetoglu and M. Engen Diferentiated Relevant to Deliver Services Competitive Position Needs of Customers Extract Commodities Undiferentiated Irrelevant to Marker Premium Pricing FIGURE 1 The Progression of Economic Value (Pine & Gilmore, 1999, p. 22) development of economic value. They thereby make a distinction between services and experiences and show how staging an experience in line with customers” needs is crucial for differentiating oneself from competitors. It is not so much the product or service itself as it is the enveloping experience that matters. Put differently, “Guests obtain memorable experiences when a company intentionally uses services as the stage and goods as props to engage individual customers in an inherently personal way” (Gilmore & Pine, 2002, p. 88). Appealing to customers in a personal way through the senses is indeed the main characteristic of Jensen's (1999) Dream Society, which is a result of a transformation from a materially defined market to a post-materialistic one in which emotions will play a central role. Under these conditions, the significance of the product per se (its content or utility value) will become secondary while stories attending the product will play the primary role in consumers” decision-making (Jensen, 1999). In other words, a new economy will arise that will call for other skills and qualities other than the delivery of services (Pine & Gilmore 1999; Boswijk et al., 2007). The key difference lies in “delivering” versus “staging,” or what Mossberg (2003) refers to as the distinction between functional and experience-based products or services. The concept of functional products or services is related to the outcome of the service, while the notion of experiences is linked to the whole proc of consumption. What is an Experience? In the experience economy, then, the attention is shifted away from product or service delivery to the customer's experience as the value-added element Downloaded by [Nanyang Technological University] at 19:24 28 April 2015 Pine & Gilmore's Concept of Experience Economy and Its Dimensions 241 (Flagestad, 2006). In order to gain a competitive advantage, it is crucial for companies to offer experiences that the market demands. There are different approaches regarding what creates experiences (see for example, Pine & Gilmore, 1999; Mossberg, 2003; Tarssanen & Kylânen, 2005; Boswijk et al., 2007). According to Pine and Gilmore (1999), experiences are “events that engage the individual in a personal way.” In a Danish report (ODA, 2006:30), we find the following definition: “An experience arises in a relation or in a dialectical relation between subject and object, both of which will have an impact on what is experienced. An experience is something extraordinary and stands out from [merely] experiencing.” This definition implies that a person experiencing something does not necessarily mean an experience has taken place. The distinction can be understood by the ordinary versus the extraordinary (cf. also the definition of ODA). In a similar manner, Mossberg (2003, p. 27) pro- poses that an extraordinary (positive) experience includes: 1) an active, dynamic process; 2) a strong social dimension, which often accompanies this process; 3) the integration of the components of meaning and a sense of joy; 4) the involvement resulting from absorption and personal control; 5) a process that is dependent on the context and an uncertainty associ- ated with something new; and 6) an experience always interwoven with life satisfaction. Boswijk et al. (2007) also follow the same path by offering a simi- lar distinction between “experiencing,” and “meaningful experiences.” They suggest that we gather impressions of the world around us through our senses. These impressions then lead to an emotional response, feelings such as fear and joy. These emotions can lead to a meaningful experience; meaningful experiences often comprise a complex of emotions that occur simultaneously or successively. Meaningful experiences go beyond those that are merely memorable, and are related to the sum of our interactions with our environment and the lessons we learn from these during the pro- cess of experiencing (Boswijk et al., 2007, p. 20). The term “memorable” is, incidentally, a key factor in Pine and Gilmore's (1999) scheme of the staging and creation of experiences as well. Dimensions of an Experience A number of frameworks and models in the literature endeavour to increase our understanding of a meaningful and an extraordinary experience as well as possible dimensions that may constitute an experience. Mossberg (2003), for instance, has proposed a model built upon the assumptions that an expe- rience is a process for a customer, that the staff and fellow customers (social dimension) are part of the context (experiencescape), and that interactions taking place between these elements all affect the customer's emotions, absorption, and control. The core element of this model is, however, the Downloaded by [Nanyang Technological University] at 19:24 28 April 2015 242 M. Mebmetoglu and M. Engen customer's involvement, suggesting that the customer plays a role in creating the experience in a continuous interaction with the company. Tarssanen and Kylânen (2005) have developed another model entitled “the experience pyramid” in order to illustrate the key product elements that are central to the creation of experiences. The first experiential ele- ment is individuality, which is about triggering in the customer a sense of being dignified. The second element is authenticity, which reflects the subjective perception of what a genuine product is. The third element is story, which is closely related to authenticity and has the primary function of linking all the elements of an experience. Multi-sensory percep- tion represents the fourth element, which means that the product offers an experience that can be appreciated through as many senses as possible. The fifth element, contrast, refers to the product's representation as a contrast to the customer's everyday routine. The sixth and final element is interac- tion, which represents the relationship between the customer, the company, and other fellow customers. All of these six experiential elements are further involved on five different levels of experience ranged in a hierarchical order starting at the bottom with the motivational level followed by physical, intel- lectual, and emotional level and ending with the final and highest level, the mental level. On this final level, a positive and powerful emotional reaction to a meaningful experience may lead to an experience of personal change (Tarssanen & Kylânen, 2005). Pine and Gilmore (1999) are less concerned with specific elements of what creates an experience. They instead suggest four main dimensions of experiences along two axes: the customer's level of participation and the customer's connection with the environment or surroundings. The cus- tomer's participation varies between active and passive participation. Being active is closely related to seeing the customer as a “prosumer” (Toffler, 1980), that is, one who both consumes and produces the service. In these cases the production or creation of the experiences will depend on the cu. tomer's active participation, such as in rafting and amusement or activity parks. With passive participation, however, the customers do not affect the performance at all, and have more of a mental presence, as it were, which is the case when one vis s a theatre, cinema or museum, for example. The second axis of experience relates to the extent to which the cus- tomer is connected with the environment or surroundings. At one end of the continuum of connection lies absorption and at the other end lies immer- sion (Pine & Gilmore, 1998). Absorption suggests that the customer has a certain distance to the stage or the experience (e.g., watching a movie) while immersion indicates that the customer gets “drawn in” the experience; that is, the distinction is that of passive versus active participation. The two cat- egories are not mutually exclusive, but differ in degrees, which is depicted in Figure 2, illustrating the four main experiential dimensions of Pine and Gilmore (1999). Downloaded by [Nanyang Technological University] at 19:24 28 April 2015 Pine & Gilmore's Concept of Experience Economy and Its Dimensions 245 the physical environment), and “performance” (performance, what is cre- ated). Back-stage and front-stage, namely, behind the scenes and in front of customers on the “scene,” respectively, are other terms used in the service- management literature. Pine and Gilmore (1999) take this further and employ the metaphor “work is theatre.” The aforementioned components are critical elements in staging expe- riences and engaging the customers, and, as pointed out earlier, the search for adventure is not a new phenomenon in tourism. Tourism has always been concerned with vis iting, seeing, and living in a different mode of life (Stamboulis & Skayannis, 2003). Leisure-travel can in general be charac- terised as a form of experience. As we have noted in the introduction to the dimensions of Pine and Gilmore's model, experience constitutes a good starting point for understanding better customers" and visitors” perception of a product or attraction. Indeed, one of the few exceptions to an empirical examination of Pine and Gilmore's (1999) framework is that of Oh, Fiore, & Jeoung (2007). Their study has developed and tested a measurement scale for the four dimen- sions. Each experiential dimension was incidentally reflected by four items. Their operationalisation involved measuring all the experience-dimension items using the following 7-point strongly disagree-strongiy agree state- ments: the experience has made me more knowledgeable (EDUCATION); the setting was very attractive to me (ESTHETICS): activities of others were fun to watch (ENTERTAINMENT); and I felt like 1 was living in a different time or place (ESCAPISM). Oh et al. adapted this scale to the accommodation sector, and based it on a “Bed-and-Breakfast” concept. Even so, their study found evidence that an experience (here in B/W context) can in fact be operationalised accord- ing to Pine and Gilmore's dimensions. Their study thus provides a good starting point for empirical studies of experiences. We shall, then, follow up their study by empirically examining Pine and Gilmore's framework in a more typical tourism context (i.e., visitor attractions) in Norway. METHODS Sampling and Data For the purpose of the study, data were collected from two different tourism contexts: a festival and a museum, both of which are visited by domestic and international touris We chose these two tourism attractions as the sites for data collections because we assumed that they both would contain Pine and Gilmore's (1999) experiential dimensions. This was a salient consideration since the purpose of this study was indeed to examine importance of these four experiential dimensions in a tourism context. Still, it must be mentioned that the two sites differed from each other with respect to duration: the Ice Downloaded by [Nanyang Technological University] at 19:24 28 April 2015 246 M. Mebmetoglu and M. Engen Music Festival is a temporary attraction whereas the Maihaugen Museum is a permanent attraction. The data from the Ice Music Festival were collected post-experience (owing to extremely cold weather); the data from the Maihaugen Museum were collected on site. Through convenience sampling, the separate gather- ing of 75 and 117 usable questionnaires from the Ice Music Festival and the Maihaugen Museum, respectively, took place in 2009. Each survey was based on a four-page questionnaire that included questions about the respondents” socio-demographic profiles (age, gender, income, etc.), visiting characteris- tics, as well as perceptions of different experiential aspects. It took about 10 minutes to complete the questionnaires. Context The Ice Music Festival takes place in Geilo (located in southern Norway), and is a two-evening event which offers a musical experience based on a variety of ice instruments. The festival offers different concerts, and is held during the first full moon of the year on the top of Kikut (1930 m above sea level). The festival promotes itself with this slogan: “The Ice Music Festival, Geilo—where esthetics, music and nature melt together.” The Maihaugen Museum is an attraction situated in Lillehammer (located in southern Norway) consisting of five different museums. The first is an open- air museum that features about 200 historical and contemporary buildings, exhibitions, cafés, and a range of activities. The second is the Norwegian Post Museum exhibiting Norway's special museum for mail and philately. The third museum is the Norwegian Olympic Museum, which presents the history of the Olympic Games from 776 BC up until the present day. In addi- tion, there are two museums based on the homes of two Norwegian Nobel laureates of literature. Measures Pine and Gilmore's (1999) concept of an experience economy involves four different dimensions: education, escapism, esthetics, and entertainment. Having thoroughly reviewed Pine and Gilmore's work along with a series of workshops with research colleagues working on the topic, we oper- ationalised each of these dimensions. As a result of this procedure, we measured EDUCATION by asking the respondents to indicate the extent to which they agreed with the following statements: 1) The visit made me more knowledgeable, and 2) I learnt something new during my visit. We also mea- sured ESCAPISM by asking the respondents to indicate the extent to which they agreed with the following statements: 1) I forgot all about time, and 2) 1 got carried away by the different events. Further, for ESTHETICS, we asked the respondents to indicate the extent to which they agreed with the following statements: 1) 1 experienced the surroundings as attractive, and Downloaded by [Nanyang Technological University] at 19:24 28 April 2015 Pine & Gilmore's Concept of Experience Economy and Its Dimensions 247 2) The surroundings strengthened my overall experience. Finally, we mea- sured ENTERTAINMENT by asking the respondents to indicate the extent to which they agreed with the following statements: 1) The visit was entertaining to me, and 2) 1 enjoyed seeing/listening to stories/music. For the dependent variable (satisfaction), we operationalised it by bor- rowing ideas from the work of Lee, Lee, and Yoo (2000). We measured satisfaction by asking the respondents to reveal the extent to which they agreed with the pursuing statements: 1) 1 am happy with my decision to visit here, 2) My experience here exceeded my expectations, and 3) Overall I am satisfied with my visit here. We measured the four experiential dimensions and overall-satisfaction variables on a seven-point scale at the Ice Music Festival and on a five-point scale at the Maihaugen Museum. Owing to these two differing two scales, we chose to report the regression coefficients in a standardised form in the following section. ANALYSIS AND RESULTS We chose partial least-squares (PLS) technique as the approach to struc- tural equation modelling (SEM) for testing the suggested model with respect to the study's two contexts (Ice Music Festival and Maihaugen Museum). We then used the PLSPM add-on module of XLSTAT software for performing the necessary analyses. One of the reasons for choosing PLS instead of a covariance-based SEM approach was due to the fact that PLS is known to be an appropriate technique for SEM analyses based on small sample sizes (Huber, Vollhardt, Matthes, & Vogel, 2010), as was the case in this study. Further, PLS, unlike its covariance-based counterpart, does not place any restrictions on the number of indicators (reflecting or forming) required for each construct. Despite the fact that PLS estimates both the measurement and struc- tural models simultaneously, the à ment of the full model included two stages. Whereas the measurement model allows us to see whether the con- structs are measured with satisfactory accuracy, we can assess the structural model by the incidence of significant relationships among the constructs as well as by the explained variance of the endogenous constructs (Cool, Dierickx, & Jemison, 1989). Since two separate structural models were run for the purpose of the study, there were also two separate measurement models that we examined prior to evaluating the structural models. Measurement Models As the measurement models contained only reflective constructs, we used the following criteria to examine psychometric properties of each of these Downloaded by [Nanyang Technological University] at 19:24 28 April 2015 250 M. Mebmetoglu and M. Engen Adj R2 =0.484 Pr>(9<0. 072 Pr>()=0.413 FIGURE 4 Results of structural model TI (Maihaugen Museum) (color figure available online). p > 0.10) did not have any effect on satisfaction. Path coefficients (signifi- cant) ranging from 0.24 to 0.42 indicated further medium to large effects on satisfaction. DISCUSSION AND CONCLUSION This study supports Pine and Gilmore's model of the four dimensions of experiences. Their model appears to be a useful framework for helping us to understand better customer and visitor's preferences in a tourism context in that different experiential dimensions are shown to have significant effects on visitors” satisfaction in different contexts. This study suggests that an eval- uation of an experience based on the senses of feeling, learning, being, and doing may be an appropriate tool. Moreover, there are implications for how organisations within the tourism industry should think in regard to creating and developing their products and services. In order to meet the market needs and demands, it is important to create and “stage” experiences so that they capture the essence of the four dimensions (feeling, learning, being, and doing). This is also essential in order to profit from the added value that is derived from creating experiences that are in demand. So far in this paper we have made use of the word “staging' with positive connotations as used in the experience-economy literature. However, the concept of staging has Downloaded by [Nanyang Technological University] at 19:24 28 April 2015 Pine & Gilmore's Concept of Experience Economy and Its Dimensions 251 equivocal connotations in the tourism literature, primarily represented by MacCannelPs (1973) theory of 'staged authenticity.” Briefly put, MacCannell (1973) argues that experiences are staged by tourism suppliers in such a way that the tourist rarely gets to the sixth and final stage (back region) in which he or she can obtain an authentic experience. Thus, we consider 'staging' as used in the experience economy literature as referring to the early stages (1 through 3) of MacCannelPs scheme in which the tourist is only allowed to interact with the front region of an experience. The findings show more specifically that the dimensions of education and entertainment do not affect the visitor's level of satisfaction whereas the dimensions of escapism and esthetics do so in the case of the Ice Music Festival. When we examine the results for the Maihaugen Museum, they reflect a similar tendency in that only two of the four dimensions influence the overall satisfaction; that is, while the dimensions of escapism and enter- tainment do not influence the satisfaction level, the dimensions of education and aesthetics have a strong effect on the same variable. The findings thus imply that experiences need to be created and staged depending on their associated contexts. For instance, since the Ice Music Festival emphasises esthetics, music, and nature in its promotional message, we should expect the dimension of esthetics to influence the visitor's satisfaction. With respect to the joint effect of the four dimensions of experience on visitor satisfaction in the two contexts, the results are ambiguous, how- ever. According to Pine and Gilmore (1999), the richest experiences will also in reality be represented by portions of all four dimensions. It is the combination of feeling, learning, being, and doing that forms the so- called “sweet spot,” and that goal should be striven for when creating compelling experiences (Pine & Gilmore, 1999). Following this assump- tion, we should expect that all four dimensions, though in different ways, should influence the visitors overall satisfaction with the festival and the museum. This influence can be in the form of either direct significant effects on or contribution to explaining the variance in the dependent vari- able. The latter may incidentally occur owing to intercorrelations between the four experiential dimensions in the overall model. The analyses con- ducted showed, however, that the insignificant experience dimensions did not contribute to explaining the variance in the overall satisfaction either. This finding suggests simply that an experience is not necessarily depen- dent upon the existence of all of the four experience dimensions at the same time. A theoretical implication of this finding is that only few experiential dimensions can explain a considerable proportion of a consequence variable (e.g., visitor satisfaction). Despite the fact that Pine and Gilmore's (1999) experiential dimensions have a great explanatory power, these dimen- sions combined with some other variables (e.g., socio-economic) could help explain more of the variation in visitor satisfaction with a tourism Downloaded by [Nanyang Technological University] at 19:24 28 April 2015 12 3 8 M. Mebmetoglu and M. Engen attraction. In a similar vein, it would be useful to compare the explanatory power of Pine and Gilmore's model with some of the alternative models (e.g., Tarssanen & Kylinen, 2005) that we have described earlier in this paper. In so doing, we would not only see which of the existing experience models are the most explanatory, but this exercise would also enable us to see possibilities of combining experiential elements from different models for different purpos: Another theoretical approach to take towards experiential models is to relate the different experiential dimensions to visitors” travel or trip motives. When examining the different models and their respective experiential ele- ments (e.g., interaction, contrast, entertainment) one can easily see their parallels in tourism-motivation research (e.g., social contact, escape, fun, and joy). This observation may simply suggest that the so-called experien- tial dimensions are closely associated with visitors motives and reasons for visiting an attraction in the first place. Future studies that employ structural equation modelling may effectively ascertain such a relationship between experiential elements and motives. The results of this study generate some useful practical implications as well. As touched upon initially, the experience economy as a mega-trend implies an increased emphasis on staging of experiences as a source of added value (Pine & Gilmore, 1998; 1999; Jensen, 1999; Gilmore & Pine, 2002; Boswijk et al., 2007). We may consider value-creation from both the consumers” and producers' viewpoints. Consumers experience a higher level of “demand satisfaction” and thereby an increased perceived value, while the company is able to extract an added value in relation to increased profits through higher prices or increased sales, or both. The results here show that the different dimensions of experience affect the visitor's level of satisfaction. Business leaders can, therefore, use the mea- surement scale of the dimensions a method or instrument for examining the company's staging or creation of the service and how well they meet the customer's expectations. Just as the continuous measurement of customer perception of quality is crucial for a company, the measurement of the com- pany's ability to stage experiences is just as important in the future. This is perhaps even more important for attractions and events where it is difficult to determine what visitors expect before they come. With respect to the development of extraordinary or meaningful experiences, the importance of the element of surprise is often pointed out. Accordingly, the visitor does not know quite what to expect. Gaining knowledge of whether one succeeds in creating value for the customers through experiences is critical to one's is important that the producers focus on developing and staging the elements that are most crucial for the customers” assessment of the experi- ence (i.e., the aspects that create value and satisfaction). The results from the Ice Music Festival and the Maihaugen Museum show that it may be important