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THE BRITISH FOOD JOURNAL
Call for Papers

Special Issue on: Experiential Marketing in Food Retailing

The British Food Journal announces the call for papers for a special issue on Experiential Marketing in Food Retailing. The deadline for submission is June 1, 2011. This journal is included in the ISI Citation Index.

Purpose of the special issue

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 their customers rather than delighting them (Brown, 2009).

 

1. How, in the context of food retailing, does the experiential marketing concept translate into practice?
2. How can experiential marketing help companies build their brands and brand equity, make them distinctive in the marketplace, and see their revenues and value increase?

The intention of this special issue is to examine two fundamental questions:

• What exactly are ‘memorable customer experiences’ in a food retailing context?
• What are key components in memorable food-retailing customer experiences? Examples could be anticipations, specific emotions, sensorial stimulations, or sources of authenticity.
• How does the social environment (e.g., presence of others during the delivery) influence the customer’s food experience? And how are ‘humanics’ (i.e., people) and ‘mechanics’ (i.e., systems) mixed in order to create memorable customer experiences (cf. LaTour, Carbone, and Goan, 2009)?
• Is it possible for food retailers to deliver memorable food customer experiences consistently?
• What are the channels for delivering memorable food-retailing customer experiences?
• How should companies communicate about customer experiences? For example, what are the implications for advertising about food?
• How do you measure a company’s success in delivering memorable customer experiences?
• Are niche and specialist food retailers able to explore and exploit experiential marketing more effectively than larger multiple businesses?
• Does experiential marketing cross international and cultural boundaries?
• Cases in successful experiential marketing—and failures?

Preference will be given to empirical papers (both qualitative and quantitative), although theoretical papers that offer comprehensive frameworks of experiential marketing in food retailing are also welcomed. As the British Food Journal is widely read by an academic and business audience, all submissions should include implications for practitioners. Papers must deal with their chosen topic in the setting of food retailing.

References

Brown, S. (2009), “Please hold, your call is important to us: Some thoughts on unspeakable customer experiences”, in Lindgreen, A., Vanhamme, J., and Beverland, M.B. (2009), Memorable Customer Experiences: A research anthology, Gower Publishing, Farnham, pp. 253-266.

Christensen, J. (2009), Global Experience Industries: The business of the experience economy, Aarhus University Press, Århus.

Csikszentmihalyi, M. (1990), Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience, Harper & Row, New York, NY.

Holbrook, M.B. & Hirschman, E. (1982), “The experiential aspects of consumption: consumer fantasies, feelings, and fun”, Journal of Consumer Research, 9 (September), 132-140.

LaTour, K., Carbone, L.P., and Goan, S. (2009), “Managing hospitality experiences: Las Vegas style”, in Lindgreen, A., Vanhamme, J., and Beverland, M.B. (2009), Memorable Customer Experiences: A research anthology, Gower Publishing, Farnham, pp. 177-194.

Lindgreen, A., Vanhamme, J., and Beverland, M.B. (2009), Memorable Customer Experiences: A research anthology, Gower Publishing, Farnham.

Pine, B.J. & Gilmore, J.H. (1999), Experience Economy, Harvard Business School Press, Boston, MA.

Schmitt, B.H. (2003), Customer Experience Management, John Wiley & Sons, Hoboken, NJ.

Shaw, C. & Ivens, J. (2005), Building Great Customer Experiences, Palgrave Macmillan, Basingstoke.

Smith, S. & Wheeler, J. (2002), Managing the Customer Experience, Prentice Hall, Harlow.

Tynan, C. and McKechnie, S. (2009), “Experience marketing: A review and reassessment”, Journal of Marketing Management, Vol. 25, No. 5-6, pp. 501-517.

Processes for the submission of papers

Papers submitted must not have been published, accepted for publication, or presently be under consideration for publication elsewhere. Submissions should be between 4,000 and 6,000 words in length. Copies should be submitted via e-mail in a single Word attachment (including all figures and tables) to the guest editor. The first page must contain the paper title, the author name(s), and the contact information for all authors. For additional guidelines including the requirement for a structured abstract, please see the “Notes for Contributors” from a recent issue of the British Food Journal or visit

http://www.emeraldinsight.com/info/journals/bfj/jourinfo.jsp.

Authors should not identify themselves in the body of their paper.

Please address questions to the guest editor:

Dr. Martin Hingley
Department of Business Management and Marketing
Harper Adams University College
Newport
Shropshire
TF10 8NB
United Kingdom
Tel: + 44 1952 820 280
E-mail: mhingley@harper-adams.ac.uk

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