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1 – 10 of 24Moira Teed, Christopher Norman, May Aung, Doug Adlam, Sameer Goswami, Brae Surgeoner and BiChen Zhu
To date few research studies exist on consumers' responses to the adoption of Wal‐Mart into towns and cities. This paper seeks to examine the expected impact of a Wal‐Mart store…
Abstract
Purpose
To date few research studies exist on consumers' responses to the adoption of Wal‐Mart into towns and cities. This paper seeks to examine the expected impact of a Wal‐Mart store in a community before its arrival.
Design/methodology/approach
Media reviews, participant observations and in‐depth interviews were applied. Positive and negative articles relating to Wal‐Mart as exhibited in the newspapers – the Guelph Tribune and the Guelph Mercury – were reviewed. Participant observations were conducted in three different shopping areas of Guelph: the Downtown area, the Stone Road mall area and the Willow West mall area. A total of 13 participants from these shopping areas were interviewed.
Findings
Overall, this study found that the participants were receptive to the notion of Wal‐Mart coming to Guelph despite the negative publicity and strong opposition Wal‐Mart had faced in the media. Additionally, this study offered insights for this marketplace based on the consumption context of hedonic and utilitarian shoppers. The intensity of these shoppers' perceptions and beliefs were found to be different for different contexts such as retail shopping, businesses and social.
Research limitations/implications
This study demonstrates the importance of wider contextual comprehension when trying to understand what values consumers hold for retailers in the marketplace. However, these findings are restricted by the limited range of opinions captured. A fully holistic view is only possible when taking into account the perspectives of local business owners, future Wal‐Mart employees and managers, activists, or politicians – all of whom have an impact on the situation of Wal‐Mart in Guelph.
Practical implications
Insights from this study can assist management personnel for their future expansion plans.
Originality/value
This study extends the application of consumers' value dimensions by focusing not only on consumers' hedonic and utilitarian values but also by incorporating the community context. Furthermore, it offers a multi‐method qualitative market research approach for discovering insights that would not have emerged from utilizing just one method of data collection. This is also the first study to assess consumer responses before a store's construction.
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Paris Tsartas, Harry Coccossis and Magdalena Vasileiou
The aim of this chapter is to provide a holistic overview of issues and topics regarding tourism geography in Greece: from its origins to its current situation. By following a…
Abstract
The aim of this chapter is to provide a holistic overview of issues and topics regarding tourism geography in Greece: from its origins to its current situation. By following a historical tracking of tourism activities in this country and the growth of tourism geography as an academic domain at the university level, the main goal is to analyze the shift of academic research on tourism from geographical perspective, as presented in both the Greek and English language literature. The chapter concludes that there is a need for practical orientation and redefinition of typologies of tourism geographies in order to apply a more sustainable and cross-disciplinary approach in the academic discourse on Greek tourism.
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Travel and tourism have had a long history in the Nordic countries, but research on tourism has a relatively short tradition in the region. Recently, academic interest in the…
Abstract
Travel and tourism have had a long history in the Nordic countries, but research on tourism has a relatively short tradition in the region. Recently, academic interest in the Nordic tourism space has grown and diversified especially as a result of increasing numbers of academics and institutions involved with tourism geographies and studies and education in the region. The Nordic context has provided thematic focus areas for empirical studies that characterize tourism geographies in the region, with topics including nature-based tourism, utilization of wilderness areas, second-home and rural developments, impacts in peripheries, and tourism as a tool for regional development. In addition, there are emerging research themes outside of the traditional core topics, such as urban, events, and heritage tourism.
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Nicolai Scherle and Hans Hopfinger
This chapter aims to familiarize the reader with some of the important aspects of tourism geography in the German-speaking countries. It starts with a primarily historical-genetic…
Abstract
This chapter aims to familiarize the reader with some of the important aspects of tourism geography in the German-speaking countries. It starts with a primarily historical-genetic perspective on tourism development and the theoretical traditions associated with them. The second section describes the structure of the discipline, with a focus on the institutionalization of the field in the universities including their research specialization. The chapter maintains that tourism geography plays a marginal role compared with other subdisciplines of geography, though this is reflected primarily in its institutionalization and less so in the research undertaken. The last section deals with the current challenges and future prospects in German-speaking geographies of tourism from a problem-centered perspective.
This chapter discusses the main research interests and outputs in the various branches of geography that have influenced the study of tourism from a geographical perspective. It…
Abstract
This chapter discusses the main research interests and outputs in the various branches of geography that have influenced the study of tourism from a geographical perspective. It argues that the idiographic tradition has been transversal throughout, leading to the growing interest for tourism within the geography academic community in the last 10 years. There is a focus on the birth of specific research groups, mainly related to a constellation of new university curricula on tourism and—with few exceptions of territorial tradition—to an intermittent availability of public research funds. The chapter concludes with a more general picture of the place of tourism within the geography discipline in Italy and of evolving trends in terms of research results, dissemination, and evaluation.
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This chapter reflects upon the trajectory of research in the geography of tourism in Spain. It begins with a review, including the evolution of the main topics present in the…
Abstract
This chapter reflects upon the trajectory of research in the geography of tourism in Spain. It begins with a review, including the evolution of the main topics present in the subdiscipline, with a special focus on developments since the 1990s. This is followed by an analysis of the current role and potential impact of academic tourism geography and a discussion on the recent growth in the publication of research results in international journals. Of importance are the institutional factors that explain the increasing recognition of research on the geography of tourism in Spain. Finally, the chapter discusses the hegemony of positivist approaches pivoting on land use, local and regional development, impact analysis, and landscape transformation, as well as the emerging links between Spanish tourism geography and the international mainstream schools of thought.
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Depending on the research approach one uses, the development of particular bodies of knowledge over time is the result of a combination of agency, chance, opportunity, patronage…
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Depending on the research approach one uses, the development of particular bodies of knowledge over time is the result of a combination of agency, chance, opportunity, patronage, power, or structure. This particular account of the development of geographies of tourism stresses its place as understood within the context of different approaches, different research behaviors and foci, and its location within the wider research community and society. The chapter charts the development of different epistemological, methodological, and theoretical traditions over time, their rise and fall, and, in some cases, rediscovery. The chapter concludes that the marketization of academic production will have an increasingly important influence on the nature and direction of tourism geographies.
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Carine Fournier and Rémy Knafou
This chapter demonstrates that despite an unfavorable disciplinary climate for new academic subjects in France, tourism found its place in the French geographical scene almost 40…
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This chapter demonstrates that despite an unfavorable disciplinary climate for new academic subjects in France, tourism found its place in the French geographical scene almost 40 years ago. The first part traces the history of tourism in French geography until the epistemological turn due to the research laboratory MIT in the mid-1990s. It also focuses on the absence of knowledge of the Anglo-American literature and of multidisciplinarity in French research on tourism. The second part focuses on the valorization of tourism geography research in France, emphasizing the development of multidisciplinarity since the early 2000s, including the creation of a multi-disciplinary tourism laboratory and two journals. The chapter concludes reflecting on the possibility of a science of tourism.
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