Marketing of touristic districts - viable systems in the experience economy

In the extant managerial literature, the recent contribution by J. Pine II and J.H. Gilmore, The Experience Economy Goes Beyond Service, has attracted our attention because it offers so much food for thought regarding the possible evolutionary pathways that advanced societies’ consumption models could follow and the consequent strategic challenges that businesses will have to face in order to meet their clients’ new needs and to successfully adapt to market changes. Based on their observations of American society, certainly that with the greatest propensity toward consumption, and starting from the implicit hypothesis that demand is constantly on the lookout for new objects and forms of consumption, for new emotions and sensations, and with greater consumer expectations (Ritzer, 2000), the two scholars suggest the provocative thesis that, by now, the era of services is on its way out to make way for the experience economy. In this new scenario, in which there is little or nothing left to purchase, for the extre mely demanding and aware consumer, value is created by the enterprise that offers experiences, rather than goods and services. In the American authors’ view, experiences represent economic proposals that differ greatly from services, at least to the same extent that services differs from goods; nevertheless, they still represent ‘products’ which, like goods and services, can be offered to the client either singly or in combination with other outputs (good, services) in the form of ‘packages’. Moreover, compared to services, experiences stand out for their uniqueness and capacity to be personal, instead of personalized, in addition to the fact that they are ‘staged’ and not simply handed out. This implies that enterprises must undergo a transformation from being mere providers of services or sellers of goods to becoming ‘stage directors’ of experiences for the client who, in the new perspective, is called ‘guest’. By the same token, writes Rifkin, the economy is being transformed, from “gigantic factory” to “endless theater” and now “every business is show business” (Rifkin, 2000, p. 219). Consumer satisfaction and loyalty are determined by the ability of organizations to go beyond the normal capacity to satisfy demand, trying to transcend expectations through new and completely unexpected offerings for the clientele; it is a matter of staging surprises, thus widening the gap between what the client perceives and what s/he expects to get (Pine and Gilmore, p. 117). According to Toffler (1988, p. 236), “we will become the first civilization in history to utilize highly advanced technology to produce the most transitory and, at the same time, the most enduring of products: the human experience”. The experience economy model, which came out in the U.S. in parallel with numerous other managerial theories and models in support of the ‘theatricalization of economic activities’ (Grove, Fisk, and Bitner, 1997), seemed, to us, particularly applicable to the tourism industry and especially to tourism districts. The latter are territories in which it is a daily task of tourism operators to formulate offerings that are often inspired by the logic of providing the clientele with a more or less integrated mix of goods and services in which, however, there is an experiential dimension that is purely casual, spontaneous, and unintended, with no real economic or marketing objective. In a context of entertainment economy (Bird, 2002), the evolution of tourist demand towards forms of demand for experiences actually forces agents in the sector, if they are to remain competitive, to develop a new conceptual framework and adopt original managerial tools for fulfilling this demand. In other words, if consumers tend to essentially purchase emotions and experiences, then the supply side must be populated with producers and sellers of ‘memories’ (Valdani and Guenzi, 1998), and the marketing of services and of experiences must use the theater model as its point of reference (Grove, Fisk, and Bitner, 1997). The aim of this article is to propose an application of the experience economy model to tourism and, in particular, to tourist districts (Pencarelli, 2001), interpreted as a paradigm of the Viable Systems Approach (VSA) (Golinelli, 2000). This concept has allowed us to discern what type of districts, otherwise labeled as touristic systems, local tourist offering systems and so on in the literature, fit the concept of ‘system’ in a narrow sense and what the prerequisites are, therefore, that a district must meet in order to qualify as a viable system. From this work it emerges that, among the various factors needed for a district (in the strictest sense) to fall within the viable systemic concept, there must be the indispensable presence of a governing body, to which we refer in our proposal for possible tourist district market-oriented management tools. We propose applying the marketing concept to tourist districts with all due conceptual caution, aware of the limitations inherent in both theory and managerial actions, in undertaking to shift into territorial contexts paradigms and tools that were developed with reference to organizational systems. The marketing paradigm most effective for our purposes is that of total relationship marketing (Gummesson, 1999), which goes beyond the traditional framework of marketing management to move toward the concept of marketing-oriented management. Total relationship marketing is based on a holistic approach which aims to build and maintain longterm, positive relationships with single clients and other stakeholders, and which recognizes that the end value for the client is co-created with all of the parties involved. From this standpoint, Gummesson’s thesis, analogous to the relationship marketing approach put forward by Peck, Christopher, Payne, and Clark (1999), promotes the idea that relationship marketing represents the convergence of the marketing paradigm and that of total quality (Cozzi, Ferrero, 2000), and focuses on customer satisfaction and customer service. In other words, it is a question of adopting an integrated managerial perspective that is culturally holistic, in keeping with the viable system concept. What is to be avoided is the logic of focusing the marketing only on the final client thereby falling into a near-sighted approach that underestimates the importance of truly satisfying an audience when all of the theater components have worked together well. Indeed, concentrating exclusively on the external consumer means ignoring the fact that, in an organizational system, there are stakeholders (internal clients, distributers, suppliers, financial backers, public institutions, mass media, etc.) whose complete satisfaction is an indispensable condition for satisfying the final client and for long-term competitive success. Finally, from our work there emerges, alongside the indisputable merits of providing innovative and holistic elements for reflection and action for the governance of tourist districts in the new consumption scenario, that the experience economy model also presents some negative aspects. These aspects should not be overlooked in the governance of touristic systems when, for instance, following in the wake of a strong theme, the choice is made to stage experiences aimed at enhancing existing facets of the territory or region (in terms of both front region and back region) and build artificial touristic spaces that tourists must pay for in an area where a real experience could be enjoyed for free. We allude, in particular, to the danger that in an effort to make an offering so spectacular in terms of providing tourists with experiences, emotions, memories, dreams come true, or other forms of entertainment, it risks becoming excessively trite and overly commercialized, thus creating desensitized clients who are even resentful of the various forms of experience-tourism and are less apt to be amazed, awed, and surprised. Pushing too hard or inappropriately on the spectacular experience lever can actually make people want to run from anything that makes their free time, which should be for creative and recreational activities of choice, become ‘mandated time’ geared toward forced consumption. Ultimately, time is manipulated so that it no longer enriches and relaxes but rather, impoverishes and tires individuals, negatively impacting on their quality of life (Rifkin, 2000, p. 201; Pratesi, 2002, pp. 73-74). The experience economy model must therefore be adopted prudently, avoiding interpretations that are totally uncritical which can occasionally be seen in Pine and Gilmore; instead, it would be preferable to follow the suggestions of Grove, Frisk, and Bitner (1997) according to whom, when management embraces the theater metaphor, it is essential that a staging of experiences be authentic (tourists can tell immediately when a situation or an attitude is fake and they usually do not appreciate it), adaptable, and appropriate (every performance must be adapted to the situation, to the client, etc.), as well as be sufficiently applicable to the context being managed.