"Mini" special issue on experiential marketing in food retailing
Article Type: Guest editorial From: British Food Journal, Volume 115, Issue 5
About the Guest Editors
Dr Martin K. Hingley is Professor of Strategic Marketing at the University of Lincoln’s Business School. Dr Hingley’s research interests are in marketing and supply chain management. He has presented and published widely in these areas, including in Industrial Marketing Management, Journal of Marketing Management, and Supply Chain Management: An International Journal. He serves on the board of several international academic journals and also regularly guest edits academic journals. Dr Hingley has broad business experience in the international food industry and has spent some time in provision of market and business analysis and industry-based training with the Institute of Grocery Distribution (IGD), and previously held a three-year fellowship with global retail chain Tesco Plc.
Dr Adam Lindgreen is Professor of Marketing at the University of Cardiff’s Business School. Dr Lindgreen received his PhD from Cranfield University. He has published in California Management Review,Journal of Business Ethics, Journal of Product and Innovation Management, and Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science, among others. Among his most recent books are Managing Market Relationships (Gower Publishing, 2008) and Memorable Customer Experiences (Gower Publishing, 2009). His research interests include business and industrial marketing, experiential marketing, and corporate social responsibility. He serves on the boards of many journals; he is the Joint Editor of Journal of Business Ethics for the section on corporate responsibility.
Experiential marketing has been defined as when companies intentionally employ services as the stage and goods as props to engage individual customers in such a way that it creates a memorable event (Pine and Gilmore, 1999). With a well-executed experiential marketing strategy, companies are able to charge a higher premium for their offerings and, as a result, see their profit margins increase. However, the scramble to achieve a presence among experience providers, combined with a lack of knowledge of what experiential marketing is all about and how it can be used for commercial advantage, has led many companies to rush to design and implement experiential marketing. Sadly, with little idea as to what they want to achieve by means of experiential marketing as part of their overall marketing strategy, these companies often have ended up dissatisfying rather than delighting their customers (Brown, 2009). Despite a considerable amount of literature on the topic (Christensen, 2009;Csikszentmihalyi, 1990; Holbrook and Hirschman, 1982; Lindgreen et al.,2009; Schmitt, 2003; Shaw and Ivens, 2005; Smith and Wheeler, 2002; Tynan and McKechnie, 2009), holes remain to be filled and new fields need to be explored. Thus, the overall objective of this mini special issue is to provide research and case insight in experiential marketing in food retailing.
Three papers follow. The first paper, “An empirical test of experiential shopping in food retailing”, by Mark Lang and Neal H. Hooker investigates the retail shopping experience, specifically concerning comparisons of consumer satisfaction. The context is large-scale retailing. The authors’ propose and test three hypotheses concerning customer attitudes and behaviour in a range of settings, providing useful empirical investigation and understanding of satisfaction.
The second paper, “Facilitating customers’ post-purchase food retail experiences”, by Hannu Saarijärvi, Hannu Kuusela and Timo Rintamäki,follows on neatly from the first paper, to consider the understanding of post-purchase behaviour. The internet is uses to identify customers’ buyer rationale in order to determine post-purchase food retail experiences. The authors’ propose typologies of buyers in order to identify and categorise consumers within an experiential framework.
The third paper, “Remembered eating experiences described by the self,place, food, context and time”, by Hannele Kauppinen-Räisänen,Johanna Gummerus and Katariina Lehtola, considers the importance of positive remembered eating experiences and their influence on future buyer behaviour. This qualitative study draws on powerful memories and positive associations of food in time and context that can add an important dimension to future marketing.
We take this opportunity to thank all those who have contributed to creating this special issue of British Food Journal. First, we thank the reviewers who provided timely feedback to the authors, thereby helping them improve their manuscripts. The reviewing was a double-blind process. Second, we extend a special thanks to the Editor, Chris Griffith, and the team at BFJfor giving us the opportunity to serve as guest editors of this special issue. Last but not least, we warmly thank all of the authors who submitted manuscripts for consideration. We appreciate and are grateful for their desire to share their knowledge and experience with the journal’s readers – and for putting their views forward for possible challenge by their peers.
Martin K. Hingley and Adam LindgreenGuest Editors
