Introduction: Restaurant experiences are an important part of a destination’s service offer andrestaurants in their turn play an important role for visitors’ and for inhabitants’ well-being.Naturally high quality of food is essential for a restaurant customer’s experience, however thisis not enough. Often feeling welcome, meeting skillful employees and enjoying the atmosphereare as important as the food served. From a destination perspective it is especially interestingto understand how visitors create value during their stay. From a restaurant and hotel company point of view it is especially interesting to further understand how their customers create value during their entire stay with a special focus on eating out. In order to understand visitors’ value creating processes during their stay at a destination it is important to know the customers’ own world of processes, activities and value creation seen from the customer perspective. These processes and activities are partly invisible for companies and destinations. Compared to earlier studies where the customer is regarded as a passive receiver of solutions, a goods-dominant-view (Vargo & Lusch, 2004), this project aims to regard the customer as a person who actively integrates different opportunities in order to create value in a specific context, a customer-dominant-view (Vargo & Lusch, 2004, 2008).
Literature review: Value is always created in an interaction between an offering and a customer, and the interaction is relative, interactive and depends on the customers’ preferences (Holbrook, 2006). The customer is in the center of attention, as an active thinking and reflecting individual, determining the own customer value, which is realized through customer experiences according to Holbrook (2006, 1999) or as value in context according to Vargo and Lusch (2008). During value creation all actors act as resource integrators, by actively using their personal resources (knowledge and skills) in continuous interactions in order to enhance their personal consumption experience (Baron & Harris, 2008; Payne, Storbacka, & Frow, 2008; Vargo & Lusch, 2004). Resources could according to Arnould et al. (2006) be distinguished as social, cultural, physical, operant (knowledge and skills) and economic operand resources (objects and physical spaces). The active role of customers as participants in the service production/delivery indicates customers’ knowledge and skills playing an important role.
Visitors’ experiences related to eating out are characterized by contact-intensive services (Shostack, 1985), including many activities and interactions. Visitors’ eating ou texperiences are multifaceted and could be related to many aspects such as traveling for leisure or in business, meals as social and cultural events and eating out as an urbane xperience (Bell & Valentine, 1997; Finkelstein, 1989; Jonsson & Pipping Ekström, 2011; Morgan, Watson, & Hemmington, 2008; Mäkelä, 2009). Also Walter (2011) highlights the social and physical dimension of restaurant experiences. Furthermore Mathisen (2013) examines how tourism firms act as co-creators of value in tourist activities with a special focus on story telling. Sundqvist (2015) has examined travellers experiences related to perceived authenticity of a meal context from a sociological perspective. His study shows that individuals’ cultural capital (Bourdieu, 1984) is the main influence of how they perceive meal contexts.
Many aspects of tourist and eating out experiences have been examined, however there is still a need for research of eating out experiences as a part of a visitors’ stay at a destination. Especially a holistic view of visitors eating out experiences during their whole stay at a destination from the visitor’s point of view is of interest.
The aim of the study: The purpose of this study is to examine drivers of visitors’ resource integrating activities during their stay at a destination with a special focus on eating out. The focus of this study will be the business travellers’ perspective.
Methods & material: Methodologically the study will follow the recommendations made in earlier innovation research related to tourism, hospitality and service indicating a need for approaches that facilitate holistic and multi-disciplinary approaches (Hjalager, 2010). Tronvåll, Brown et al.(2011) recommend studies of customers’ service experiences to be based on multi-methodfield studies with observations as an important part. This project will apply an (n)ethnographical inspired field study approach, including observations, interviews and field documentation (Kozinets, 2002; Van Maanen, 2006). The design of the empirical study will, besides research literature, be based on the outcome from the workshops with the multidisciplinary research group and representatives from the industry. Data will be analysed in an inductive approach according to constant comparative principles (Glaser & Strauss,1967).
Expected main results: The results will illustrate the visitors’ stay in a holistic way with the customer experience and value creation in focus. Furthermore the drivers beyond visitors’ actions, interactions and activities regarding eating out, which describe customers’ resource integration processes related to eating out activities. The results will also contribute to the development of companies as well as destinations with regard to eating out and meals.