旅游与服务市场奇幻-感觉-有趣—外文翻译.doc

标题：Tourism and hospitality marketing: fantasy, feeling and fun
原文：Experiential marketing has become a cornerstone of many recent advances in areas such as retailing, branding and events marketing, but with attempting to sell an experience of a place through relating it to the lifestyle constructs of consumers. For many years we have discussed the characteristics of tourism and hospitality products, which suggest that marketing within the sectors is different to many other industries, as purchase decisions are made on the basis of projected and perceived images, rather than prior experience. However, despite the amount of literature being written on these perceived differences, most marketing in the sector relies heavily on traditional marketing concepts, and it is often difficult to discriminate tourism and hospitality approaches to marketing from those advocated for other consumer products.
Tourism and hospitality has become a major economic activity as expectations with regard to the use of our leisure time have evolved, attributing greater meaning to our free time. The evolution of tourist behaviour encourages both change and the emergence of new meaning (Bouchet et al., 2004) This results in marketing having potentially a greater prominence in tourism and hospitality, than in other industries. Potential that is not always fully achieved (Morgan and Pritchard, 2002). The key reason for this failing is that in the main marketing for tourism and hospitality has been focussed not on the consumer, but on the destination or outlet, with marketing strategies being related to the products offered (Williams, 2000, 2002). As marketing within this sector has evolved however, the offer has become increasingly less important due to the enormous heterogeneity of consumer motivation and behaviour. The result is that firms and destinations within this sector need to redefine their strategies to reflect these changes.
Studying the behaviour of consumers has become increasingly complex, and it is fair to argue that tourism and hospitality by its very nature, should be in the vanguard of research into contemporary consumers (Williams, 2002). Tourism and hospitality offers a multitude of venues in which people can consume. Bars, restaurants, hotels, theme parks, casinos and cruise ships all operate as “Cathedrals of consumption” (Ritzer, 1999) offering increasingly complex consumption opportunities to increasingly
complex consumers. Tourism and hospitality has developed into one of the most important global economic activities, due in part to a combination of a transformation of offers and increasingly postmodern demand. These changes mean that tourism and hospitality consumption has evolved to become more qualitative, more demanding, and more varied (Bouchet et al., 2004).
Anecdotal evidence delivered through media coverage, would suggest that contemporary consumers are self-indulgent, pleasure seeking individuals, easily dominated by marketers and advertisers, who act like sheep in the ways they mimic referent others. However, the reality is obviously much more complex than such a scenario suggests. Contemporary consumers are as likely to be driven by thrift as to they are to be hedonistic, they use consumption to make statements about themselves, they use consumption to create their identities and they develop a sense of belonging through consumption. For many people it is through consumption that relationships are formed, for example, colleagues enjoying a drink after work or children hosting their birthday parties at McDonalds, enabling them to define their circle of friends .Consumption also plays a part in finding fulfilment, developing creativity and expressing their individual abilities. Clearly such a complex phenomena cannot be easily understood.
Recent arguments have been sounded that aspects of contemporary tourism and hospitality consumption have reflected the phenomena of postmodernism. Whilst many believe postmodernism to be a meaningless intellectual fad, inaccessible to many involved in marketing within our sector, others agree that there are worthwhile insights to be gained from the debate on the post-modern condition and its consequences for tourism and hospitality consumption and marketing. I do not intend to discuss at length the use of post-modern discourse in tourism and hospitality marketing as I have exercised it in previous work (Williams, 2000, 2002). The term postmodernism refers to a break in thinking away from the modern, functional and rational, and during the last couple of decades it has spread across all domains of knowledge, including marketing. The key concepts of post-modern marketing are fragmentation, indeterminacy and distrust of universal discourse, but by eschewing modernism it introduces a radically new and different cultural movement which coalesces in a reconceptualisation of how we experience and explain our world. In terms of experiential marketing two aspects of the post-modern discourse are most relevant, hypereality and image.
Hypereality is one of the most discussed conditions of postmodernism, and refers to the argument that reality has collapsed and has become image, illusion, simulation and simulacra (copies for which no original exists). Hyperreality refers to a blurring of distinction between the real and the unreal in which the prefix “hyper” signifies more real than real. When the real is no longer a given but is reproduced by a simulated environment, it does not become unreal, but realer than real, to the extent it becomes what Baudrillard (1993, p. 23)refers to as “a hallucinatory resemblance of itself”. In postmodernism, with the advent of hyperreality, simulations come to constitute reality itself. This scenario is exemplified throughout the tourism and hospitality industry. Baudrillard himself used the example of Disneyland, arguing it is more real than the USA itself. A point reinforced by Venturi (1995, p. 67) who suggested “Disneyland is nearer to what people want than what architects have ever given them. Disneyland is the symbolic American utopia”. In postmodern society people have become fascinated by signs and as a result, they exist in a state where signs and images have become more important than what they stand for. The result is that today’s consumers consume imagery and do not focus on what the images represent or mean. As Miller and Real (1998, p. 30) argue “we live in a world where the image or signifier of an event has replaced direct experience and knowledge of its referent or signified”.
While it is accepted that there are problems with investigating tourism and hospitality marketing through a postmodern orientation, it clearly encompasses a broad range of consumer experiences. In addition it has the potential to reframe our thinking about marketing practice in an increasingly fragmented global marketplace. A better understanding of the underlying macro forces and micro behaviour, associated with postmodernism, can be leveraged by marketers to obtain competitive advantages in the increasingly dynamic, unpredictable, unstable and competitive tourism and hospitality environment.
Traditional marketing provided a valuable set of strategies, implementation tools and methodologies that tourism and hospitality firms could use in an earlier age. As Schmitt (1999, p. 55) argued “traditional marketing was developed in response to the industrial age, not the information, branding and communications revolution we are facing today”. In a new age, with new consumers we need to shift away from a features-and-benefits approach, as advocated by traditional approaches to consumer experiences. We need to consider new concepts and approaches which capitalize on the opportunities offered by these new consumers. One such approach is experiential marketing; an approach which in contrast to the rational features-and-benefits view of consumers, takes a more postmodern orientation and views them as emotional beings, concerned with achieving pleasurable experiences.
Experiential marketing is a growing trend worldwide, with enthusiasts reported in all sectors of the global economy, from consumer products such as Ford Motor Company (Kerwin, 2004) to health care providers such as the North Hawaii Community Hospital (Hill, 2003). As Schmitt (1999, p. 53) states “experiential marketing is everywhere”. The question is what has caused this evolution in the world of marketing, and what are the implications for consumers of tourism and hospitality?
Experiential marketing was first introduced by Pine and Gilmore (1998) as part of their work on the experience economy, and further refined in many subsequent articles and books by the same authors. Pine and Gilmore (1999, p. 2) explained their view of experiential marketing in the following manner “when a person buys a service, he purchases a set of intangible activities carried out on his behalf. But when he buys an experience, he pays to spend time enjoying a series of memorable events that a company stages to engage him in a personal way”. Experiential marketing is about taking the essence of a product and amplifying it into a set of tangible, physical, interactive experiences which reinforce the offer. Rather than seeing the offer in a traditional manner, through advertising media such as commercials, print or electronic messaging, consumers “feel” it by being part of it. As Gautier (2004, p. 8) argues “experiential marketing is a totally new way of thinking about marketing, if you think it’s about simply tweaking around the edges, think again”. Experiential marketing is not about one-off events, sponsorship, sampling or general field marketing. Experiential marketing describes marketing initiatives that give consumers in-depth, tangible experiences in order to provide them with sufficient information to make a purchase decision. It is widely argued that as the science of marketing evolves, experiential marketing will become the dominant marketing tool of the future (McNickel, 2004).
Experiential marketing has evolved as a response to a perceived transition from a service economy to one personified by the experiences we participate in. In such a perception experiences are as economically different from services as services are from goods. Pine and Gilmore (2004) explain that experiences have emerged as the next step, in what they refer to as the progression of economic value. If we accept such a position; that modern economies are seen as making a transition from the marketing of services to the marketing of experiences, all tourism and hospitality offers are acts of “theatre” that stage these experiences. The experience economy has been summarised by Petkus (2002) as follows:
. contemporary economies have evolved from the delivery of commodities to the delivery of goods, from goods to services and are presently evolving from services to experiences;
.as services became increasingly commodified, customer perceptions of competitive advantage diminish, as does satisfaction;
.the delivery of experiential market offerings involves engaging customers in a memorable way; and all actions of the organisation contribute to the performance of the experiential market offering.
The huge growth in the field of experiential marketing appears to be the result of the effect of the numerous success stories cited in the media. As Kerwin (2004, p. 94) states “the beauty of a well designed experience is that while it doesn’t reach nearly as many people as a TV spot, it can attract the very customers who are most likely to buy”. The evidence seems to support this contention, for example, research undertaken by SRI, an international market research organisation, found that experiential marketing drove faster results than traditional methods, with consumers suggesting it led to quick positive purchase decisions. Amongst certain groups, younger consumers and females, the results were even more encouraging (Allen, 2005). The same research also demonstrated that experiential marketing made consumers more receptive to other forms of associated advertising, an important factor in an era of integrated marketing communication. Similar results were found by IMI International. Their research suggested that more than 55 per cent of consumers felt that the biggest single influence on propensity to consume was the ability to sample or interact with a product before purchase. In the UK, research undertaken by ID Live Brand Experience stated that as many as 85 per cent of consumers valued the opportunity to experience; touch, smell, taste or hear, products. Of those surveyed, 58 per cent confirmed that experiential marketing had encouraged them to make a purchase they were not previously planning to make. The importance of this development is not lost on marketing executives with more than 70 per cent of them recently stating that experiential marketing is the current “big theme” (Gautier, 2004). Pine and Gilmore (1999) the originators of much of the current thinking behind experiential marketing cite US Bureau of Labour statistics showing that consumer price indices, employment growth and growth in GDP have all increased at a faster rate for experiential offerings, than for commodities, goods or services. To summarise, the reason behind the continuing growth in demand for experiential marketing, is that it appears to work for both firms and customers. As Witthaus (2004, p. 10) states:
.it achieves measurable results by offering innovative ways of communicating with customers in their own environment, leading to a better ROI. And it offers a memorable, engaging and exhilarating way of reaching customers
Experiential marketing demonstrates that the media landscape has unalterably changed in recent years. In 1985, a commercial on peak-time television would have been expected to reach over 40 per cent of the population. A similar commercial today would be unlikely to reach more than 15 per cent of the population, and this figure is likely to continue falling (Gautier, 2004). Despite increased spend on traditional media many of the worlds top products and brands have suffered falling market share. There is a widespread belief that old models of advertising spend are no longer as effective as they were and alternatives have to be sought.
出处：Alistair Williams, (2006) "Tourism and hospitality marketing: fantasy, feeling and fun", International [J]Journal of Contemporary Hospitality Management, Vol. 18 Iss: 6, pp.482 - 495
标题：旅游与服务市场：奇幻，感觉，有趣

译文：体验营销已经成为许多最新进展领域的基石，例如零售业、品牌和事件营销，但随之而来的是企图一提样营销为目的建立消费者的生命周期。多年来,我们已经讨论了旅游管理的特点,市场营销,显示这些行业的营销是不同于许多其他的工业，例如产品的购买决定于计划表的基础上,而不是经验。然而,尽管大量的文学作品写出了这些显性的差异,大多数这些行业的营销部门依赖传统营销的概念,并经常很难区别旅游管理与其他的消费产品所提倡的市场营销方法的不同。
旅游与服务管理，作为能够利用我们的闲暇时间的期望已逐步形成, 给我们的业余时间带来更大的意义，已经成为主要的经济活动。旅游行为的进化和改变鼓励都新出现的意义(Bouchet苏达权等,2004)。这个营销结果在旅游管理中有着潜在的，更突出的作用。潜力,这并不总是完全达成(摩根和Pritchard,2002年)。这个失败的主要原因是,在主要的旅游管理市场上的注意力已不再集中于消费者,而是旅游景点、出口，与