Apologies for any cross posting.
Call for chapters for a forthcoming edited book on the Experience of
Tourism and Leisure , edited by Mike Morgan, Peter Lugosi and Brent
Ritchie. (See attached Word document for further details of the proposed
content)
Background
This book addresses a theme of growing importance in the tourism and
leisure industries, by which we include recreation, hospitality,
entertainment, events and sport. All these sectors exist to provide
consumers with experiences. Some organisations, for example, tour operators
who specialise in adventure tourism seek to provide extraordinary
transformational experiences; while others such as a neighbourhood café may
involve more mundane experiences, which are just as important to their
customers. Experience management is seen as the way to remain competitive
in markets where global competition and internet technology have turned
products and services into commodities, bought and sold on price alone
(Schmitt, 1999, 2003). Pine and Gilmore (1999) say that developed countries
are now ‘experience economies’, where sustainable competitive advantage can
only be gained by giving the customer a unique and memorable experience.
This is done through treating 'work as theatre and every business a stage'.
More recently, Prahalad and Ramaswamy (2004) have called for a strategic
approach based on shared values, allowing customers to co-create their own
experiences in a search for personal growth.
The concept of the experience economy has given rise to a growing number of
books aimed at practitioners, often written by ‘Customer Experience
Management’ consultants. Their approach has been seen as superficial and
production-orientated by critics who consider that, to be effective,
experience management needs to draw on a range of research insights into
the individual consumer’s experience from behavioural, sociological and
anthropological approaches and methodologies. As Holbrook and Hirschmann
(1982) said, experiences are subjective, emotional states laden with
symbolic meaning. Consumption is hedonic not utilitarian, particularly in
leisure situations. Satisfaction is a holistic response that emerges over
the course of the whole experience, rather than as a response to individual
attributes of the service (Arnould and Price, 1993). Absorption in the flow
of intense experience (Csikszentmihályi, 2002) can be a source of
happiness, personal growth and fulfilment. Experiences can reinforce a
sense of personal identity or belonging to a community.
This book will explore the dimensions of experiences and experience
management in leisure and tourism. It will attempt to develop a
multidisciplinary perspective on experiential consumption and uses the
experience paradigm to provide a critical discussion of the production and
consumption of contemporary leisure and tourism. The first part of the book
will examine the different dimensions of the consumer experience, while the
second, will focus on the organisational implications of creating and
managing experiences.
Call for chapters
We invite academics, researchers and practitioners working in this field to
produce chapters which contribute to a systematic and thematic exploration
of tourism and leisure experiences either from the consumer/participant or
from the managerial/operational perspective. While the work should be
grounded in scholarship and research, the book is not intended to be simply
a collection of research papers, so authors are urged to design their
chapters as a contribution to the conceptual understanding of one or more
aspects of the topic.
Chapters should be between 5, 000 and 7,000 words. Shorter case-studies
exemplifying the themes of the book would also be welcome.
The attached Word document outlines the proposed structure of the book as
accepted by the publisher and reviewers. Chapter proposals should indicate
where they fit into this overall structure. Authors should send an outline
chapter proposal to Mike Morgan [log in to unmask] by 31 July at the
latest. This should be approximately 600 words setting out how they plan to
develop their chosen topic, including the theoretical approach and the
leisure/tourism context.
The editors would be glad to discuss your initial ideas informally. Please
direct your enquiries in the first place to Mike Morgan
[log in to unmask]
Completed chapters would be required by 30 November 2008.
We look forward to hearing from you.
Mike, Peter and Brent
--------------------------
Peter Lugosi, PhD
Senior Lecturer, Hospitality Management
School of Services Management
Bournemouth University
Talbot Campus
Fern Barrow
Poole
Dorset
BH12 5BB
Tel. 01202 965219
Fax. 01202 515707
|