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Creating memorable tasting room experience : service provider perspectives

University of British Columbia

Wine tours and wine tastings are important components of the Okanagan tourism industry. For wineries to survive in today’s increasingly competitive market, they need to satisfy not only the basic needs of consumers but also provide memorable experiences that “engage [consumers] on an emotional, physical, intellectual or even spiritual level” (Pine and Gilmore, 1998, p. 99). Providing the right type of experience with products, services, and accompanying marketing programs has become acutely important (Kotler, Bowen, and Makens, 2014). Despite the widespread focus on and acknowledgment of the importance of memorable experiences, there is limited research on what exactly makes certain experiences special, extraordinary, and memorable. Furthermore, most consumer experience-related research has been conducted using quantitative approaches. In contrast, this study used a qualitative approach (Belk, 2006) to enhance previous findings on the factors required to facilitate memorable tourism experiences by exploring memorable consumption experiences in the wine context. Unpacking memorable consumer experiences in the wine context is critical to the success of wineries. Moreover, this process enables researchers and industry professionals to identify the various components of experiences and how they serve to transform consumers (Joy and Sherry, 2003). There are many wine consumer-related studies that focus on understanding visitors as wine buyers (Bruwer, 2004); however, the aim of this thesis is to provide a qualitative measure of the wine tasting experience from the service provider’s perspective to examine critical success factors for the development and management of consumer tasting experiences. In order to reach this goal, ethnographic data was collected using a combination of twelve in-depth expert interviews and participant observations at several wineries that focused on planning, delivery, and continued innovation of memorable experiences from the service provider’s perspectives. These findings suggest that ‘people’ and ‘process’ are the most important marketing mix elements that contribute to memorable tasting room experiences for the general public. In addition, the study found that consumption experience is co-produced by customers and service providers. Together, service providers and customers were found to play a critical role in providing memorable tasting room experiences through the process of customization.

Text

2017-08-16

Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International

http://hdl.handle.net/2429/62652

Interdisciplinary Studies

University of British Columbia

UBCO

http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/