1 Introduction
1.2 The purpose of the study
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Though researches regarding backpacker can date back to 1970’s, studies pertinent to the various conceptions and practical applications of the backpackers’ self-experiences is an area rarely explored.
1.2 The Purpose of the Study
According to the co-investigation of “Money Magazine”, “Pension Fund Association, R.O.C.”, and 104.com, above 80% of workers expect to retire before the age of 60. And, the top one dream of life for them after retirement is to “travel around the world” (洪素 卿,2010). The reason may be verified in the researches of the tourism industry that human beings tend to fulfill dream enactment and be self-actualized through travel (Laing and Crouch, 2009). On the other hand, traveling can be seen as an experience of holistic immersion, which suggests that traveling experience (especially through the form of backpacking) is truly valuable from the perspective of experiential marketing.
Previous literatures on tourist experiences, with viewpoints from various fields, all stress the importance of studying the narratives/storytelling of traveling experiences to gain more authentic insights (Dann, 2002; Carù and Cova, 2007; Elsrud, 2001; Noy, 2004; Sørensen, 2003; Uriely, 2002). Thus, understanding backpackers’ narrative interpretation of experience not only fits the global trend in the experience industry, but offers multidimensional insights to the propensity of marketing-oriented backpacking tourism industry. Research questions such as “What has been perceived or sensed when the backpackers step onto the backpacking journey?”, “What elements make a
backpacker impressed when he or she describes a backpacking experience?” “What really satisfies them after they return from a journey recalling their experiences?” and
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“What kinds of offerings can tourism industry provide for them?” In short, this study attempts to explore—
(1) the elements/essence of outbound backpacking experiences by Taiwanese backpackers
(2) the factors influencing their experiences
(3) the indicators that point out their reasons of satisfaction (includes overall evaluation, recommendation, and willing of revisit)
(4) the application of these experiences from the perspective of experiential marketing as reference for management, which provide advice for activity and marketing to enrich backpackers’ experiences.
1.3 Research Boundary & Research Target
The research target in this study is Taiwanese backpackers. However, due to the design of methodology, only those who have registered as members on
backpackers.com.tw will be reached. The following points demonstrate the selection criteria of this group of backpackers:
‧ Nationality: Taiwan
(since the viewers of backpackers.com.tw include all the Chinese-speaking people, only Taiwanese backpackers will be selected.)
‧ Membership of backpackers.com.tw
‧ Involvement: those who are chosen are not being passive viewers only; rather, they must be “self-reflexive” individuals and at least post one article on the website.
‧ Backpacking history: at least one time of backpacking experience (as long as the experience is not in a form of package tour).
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1.4 Research Process
The above research questions will be explored following the research process
indicated below (see also figure 1-1): Firstly, the concept of backpackers as a whole will be analyzed. Then, backpacking-related extraordinary experiences will be collected and integrated through past literatures, and based on the ideas discovered, the researcher intends to analyze Taiwanese backpackers’ outbound experiences via “retrospective narratives” from the most popular website of Chinese
backpackers—backpackers.com.tw, by using online ethnography, or netnography (Kozinets, 2002). Next, built on the findings from the previous phase, the components which shape the “experiencescape” (O’Dell, 2005) of Taiwanese backpackers and the influential factors that have impact on their experience will be pointed out. Finally, according to the results of the findings, recommendations and insights will be drawn in satisfying the needs of Taiwanese backpackers from the perspective of experiential marketing. Also, the study can shed light on the servicescape for both national and international tourism industries, and the management of online community for backpackers in the long term.
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Figure 1-1: Research process of this research
Research Motivation & Purpose
Backpacker & Backpacking
Induction & Analysis Elements of
Experience
Influential Factors Netnography
Backpackers’ Narrative Analysis on backpackers.com.tw
Advice &Suggestion from the Perspective of Experiential Marketing Research Boundary & Target
Literature Review
Method
Backpackers’
Retrospective Narratives Tourist Experience &
Experiential Marketing
Satisfaction
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2. Literature Review
In the following review of past literatures, three dimensions will be
focused—backpacking, tourist experience pluses experiential marketing, and backpackers’
retrospective narratives.
Backpacker, as the research subject in this study, will be analyzed first. Since the research of backpackers covering wide ranges of exploration throughout the history lasts about 40 years, only their characteristics, typology, motivations, and behaviors will be focused here.
Section that follows is about experiences, including tourist experiences and experiential marketing. The interconnections of people (backpackers) and experiences with the strategies suggested by experiential marketers will be introduced in this part. Lastly, as it is agreed in literatures that the best way to analyze backpackers’ experiences is through their storytelling or narratives, the relationship between the backpackers and their stories and the significance of travelling narratives is elaborated as the linkage with next methodology section about netnography combined with the technique of narrative analysis.
2.1 Backpacker and Backpacking
Tourists stay in Hiltons, travelers don’t. [They] want to see the country at ground level, to breathe it, experience it—live it. This usually requires two things the tourist can’t provide—more time and less money.
Wheeler et al (1992, p35)
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2.1.1 Definition and Characteristic
In the history, traveling form that resembles backpacking the most can date back to the 17th to 18th centuries, when traveling made by the noble youth was seen as “Grand Tour” for the purpose of education. As movement of people, objects, capital,
information and cultures across an increasingly globalised and apparently borderless world, there is more and more people prefer being “on the move” (Richards and Wilson, 2004). Gradually, a new form of travel is shaped, and Cohen (1972) is among the first ones who study this group of so-called “backpackers.” According to his typology of tourists, “drifter” is the prototype of the backpackers we perceive nowadays. In his later study (1973), he renamed these people as “nomad” based on their specific behaviors. What followed is Vogt’s (1976) observation and he named them “wanderer”, stressing their high mobility. Adler (1985) added further
characteristics, and call them “tramping youth”, which indicated the young age and behavioral pattern of these people. Focusing on another part, Riley (1988) found it more proper to call them “long-term budget traveler＂. Up until 1995, Loker-Murphy and Pearce officially gave the name “backpacker” in their study of this popular group of people in Australia. However, these travelers gradually become normalized and institutionalized through increased mobilities (Noy, 2007; O’Reilly, 2006; Sørensen, 2003), especially ones through the help of new communication technologies.
Currently, Hannam & Diekmann (2010) found a new emerging form—“flashpacker”, who are more affluent, with new technological developments, and have increased holidays and leisure time. What’s more, Cohen (2010) reconceptualised contemporary drifters as “lifestyle traveler”, who serves travel as a way of life that they may pursue indefinitely.
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Usually, backpacking takes place mostly as following modes: gap year travel, mini retirement, round the world travel, or volunteer abroad. And, their shared
characteristics presented in the literatures can be grouped in terms of different behaviors and motivations. Behaviors such as “long-haul, have no rigid plans (i.e.
flexible itinerary), and have a vague notion regarding their return (Cohen, 1972, 1973;
Riley, 1988; Vogt, 1976), low spending (Riley, 1988), have more opportunities than tourists to initiate direct encounters with the local population, traveling “off the beaten track” (Richards and Wilson, 2004), and rite-de-passage (Turner, 1987)”, can best describe them. And motivations can be illustrated with the statements, like “their quest for adventure, authenticity, and profound experiences; and their self-perception as travelers rather than tourists (Cohen 1972, 1973; Riley, 1988; Vogt 1976), a desire to escape ordinary, ‘normal’ (Urry, 2002) life, “departure” (Urry, 2002, p1), sensation seeking, interest in the culture of the host country, and interest in learning and
communicating with locals (Riley, 1988), and to be (or to feel) free, independent, and open-minded (Richards and Wilson, 2004). Uriely et al. (2002) concluded that the heterogeneous nature of backpacking leads us to “regard multi-type backpackers as ones who enjoy different types of experiences during her/his excursion”, emphasizing the active role of the human actor as a consumer of tourism and the diverse nature of contemporary touristic experiences. An integrated structure of the above discussion is illustrated in table 2-1 and table 2-2.
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Table 2-1: Definition and characteristic of backpacker (organized by the author)
Time Scholars Title Behaviors Motivations
17th ~ early 90’s
The Grand Tour travel as education
1970’s Cohen (1972) drifter flexible itinerary 1. quest for adventure, authenticity, and
experiences 2. self-perception as
traveler Cohen (1973) nomad
Vogt (1976) wanderer
1980’s Adler (1985) tramping youth 1. low spending 2. rite-de-passage 3. longer holidays
interest in learning and communication with
locals Riley (1988) long-term budget
traveler 1990’s Loker-Murphy
& Pearce (1995)
backpacker 1. emphasis on meeting other people 2. travel off the beaten
track
1. a desire to escape ordinary, normal life
2. departure 3. sensation seeking 4. interest in the host
culture
flashpacker affluent, with new technological gadgets
Cohen (2010) lifestyle traveler travel as a way of life
Sources: Cohen, 1972; Cohen, 1973; Vogt, 1976; Adler, 1985; Adler, 1989; Loker-Murphy & Pearce, 1995;
Hannam & Diekmann, 2010; Cohen, 2010
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Table 2-2: Research History of Backpacker
70’s late 80’s~early 90’s 1990’s Research
Focus
Emphasis on freedom and mobility; an often nostalgic search for meaningful cultural existence
Drifting(less marketing)
backpacking (overt marketing tool)
“Critical managerial approaches” are needed
Source: Hannam and Ateljevic, 2008
Richards and Wilson (2004) tried to evaluate the activities and impacts of current backpackers for its significance for the tourism market through organizing a
transnational research. The need for market research that reveals more heterogeneity and is context-specific is stressed. According to the survey of Association of Tourism and Leisure Education (ATLAS) Backpacker Research Group conducted in 2002, several issues of backpackers are examined, including traveler type (backpacker, traveler, and tourist), destinations visited, accommodation used, information sources, average daily spend, motivations (4 factors: experience seeking, relaxation seeking, sociability, contributing to destination), activities, benefits. This transnational survey was comprised of over 2300 responses, from 8 countries, 42 different nationalities. A summary is presented in table 2-3.
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Table 2-3: Motivations, Behaviors, and Attitudes of Backpackers Worldwide
Top 1 Top 2 Top 3
Visited destinations Vietnam Thailand India Accommodation
Use
Backpacker hostels
Youth hostels Friends and relatives Information sources Internet Family &
friends
Guide books
Average Daily Spend (USD)
$11-20 $5-10 $21-30
Motivation Explore the cultures
Experience excitement
Increase knowledge Activity Walking &
trekking
Benefits Thirst for more travel
Appreciation of other cultures/
More interest in learning about
A more creative way of traveling
most
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2.1.2 Backpacking—typology
The typologies of backpacking differ in accordance with various perspectives.
Loker-Murphy (1996) identifies four subgroups of backpackers with respect to their motivations: escapers/relaxers, social/excitement-seekers, self-developers, and achievers. According to Pearce’s (1982) “Travel Career Ladder”, escapers/relaxers require the lowest psychological needs, and achievers the highest. Uriely et al. (2002) integrated previous literatures and contended that backpacking can be viewed in two ways—a form or a type. The former refers to “visible institutional arrangements and practices by which tourists organize their journey: length of trip, flexibility of the itinerary, visited destinations and attractions, means of transportation and
accommodation, contact with locals, and so forth”, while the latter refers to “less tangible psychological attributes, such as tourists’ attitudes toward fundamental values of their own society, their motivations for travel, and the meanings they assign to their experiences.” It was concluded by the above research that backpackers may have more than one type of experience across their backpacking biography or even during a single trip. Furthermore, backpackers should be viewed as ones who enjoy different types of experiences during his/her excursion. Therefore, Uriely et al. made a conclusion that Israel backpackers commit to the form of backpacking, while its type-related aspects are more heterogeneous.
Hence, the following part will focus on analyzing tourist experiences as a whole, and extracting the essential formation of backpacking experiences. Then, the development of experiential marketing will be introduced.
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2.2 Tourist Experience and Experiential Marketing
“…spending more money for an experience—concert tickets, French lessons, sushi-rolling classes, a hotel room in Monaco—produces longer-lasting satisfaction than spending money on plain old stuff.”
NY Times “But Will It Make You Happy?” (7,Aug., 2010)
2.2.1 Tourist Experience
Tourist experiences infuse the mundane.”
McCabe (2002)
According to Oxford English Dictionary, experience is defined in two ways as
“practical contact with and observation of facts or events” or “an event or occurrence which leaves an impression on someone.” Thus, resulting from direct observation of or participation in events is the core meaning which this word signifies. In academic literatures, “an experience is made up inside a person and the outcome depends on how an individual, in a specific mood and state of mind, reacts to the interaction with the staged event.” (Pine & Gilmore, 1999). In a word, experiences are something personally encountered, undergone, or lived through, and the individual personally learns obtains, and accumulates conscious or unconscious feeling, knowledge or skill.
In this study, the backpacker is seen as an experiencing subjective, and what they experience during the journey is thus examined. Larsen (2007) tried to define tourist experience through his finding from the perspective of psychology as follows:
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“A tourist experience is a past personal travel-related event strong enough to have entered long-term memory.”
The past studies of tourist experiences indicate the research focus on examination of discourses and dynamics of interaction between tourism and everyday life. The importance of tourist experience is stressed, and further, this kind of experience requires more than one sense, a longer period of time, which enables tourists to be fully immersed.
Since Pine & Gilmore (1999) announced the emergence of the experience economy, more and more studies aim to explore this fascinating area, including the tourism studies, as it is a necessity to provide an experience which can satisfy the needs of tourists. Researches on tourist experience (cf. Cohen, E., 1979; Dann, G., 2002;
Henning, 2002; MacCannell, 1973; MaCabe, 2002; Urry, 1995) shows the efforts to understand these group of experiencing subjects in tourism industry. Cohen (1979), based on the premise that everyone search for meanings in terms of the “quest for a center”, developed a typology of “five modes of tourist experiences” that range between tourism motivations on one end and the attitudes toward daily life on the other. He referred to these five types of experiences as:
(1) Recreational mode—committed to the center of one’s own society, while the traveling experience for them serves the need for relaxation and entertaining
(2) Diversionary more—involves the pursuit of mere pleasure without any quest for a center. This type of tourist looks for escape.
(3) Experiential mode—involves a search for meaning in the centers of other cultures.
This type of tourist enjoys observing the “authentic life” of others without any attempt to be converted or even engaged in their life.
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(4) Experimental mode—involves a search for meaning in the centers of other cultures.
Usually found in drifter-like form of tourism, they try out the authentic life of others.
(5) Existential mode—involves a search for meaning in the centers of other cultures.
They already commit to an “elective center”, which can be associated with pilgrims.
On the other hand, in terms of psychological angle, Larsen (2007) suggested that
“individual experiences, as they are formed within the individual by means of psychological processes is one, but only one, viable focus for tourism research if the aim is to understand (i.e. to explain and predict) tourist behavior.” Thus, he proposed threefold idea of the phenomenon of the tourist experience—expectations, event, and memory—which are believed to be the general psychological process of the formation of tourist experiences. The stage of memory is especially emphasized on the statement that “episodic memory consisted in long-term memory is the individual store of factual memories concerning personal experiences”, which suggests that tourist experiences are stored in an episodic way and what becomes episode ends finally in our long-term memory. Thus, he concluded that “the best predictor of the desire to repeat a trip is memories of the trip, indicating the importance of retrospective measures when the issue is tourist experience.”
Further, Quan and Wang (2004) provided a conceptual framework for identifying the position and the role of total tourist experience. According to them, there are two perspectives so far in the literatures regarding tourist experience—one from social science and the other from marketing/management. The former regards tourist
experience as “experience contrast to daily experience” (i.e. Peak Experience), which mainly derived from attractions; the latter sees tourist as consumer, so tourist
experience equals to consumer experience that is an extension of the daily experience,
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such as accommodation or transportation. According to their integrated conceptual framework as showed in figure 2-1, they found both peak touristic experiences and supporting consumer experiences are interchangeable; in other words, some
components of supporting consumer experience can turn to be peak experience, and vice versa. Also, the specific relationship between the tourist experience and the daily experience lies in three dimensions: the tourist experience is in sharp contrast to the daily experience (such as “routine” vs. “unusually”, “the familiar” vs. “novel” etc.); it is the extension of the daily experience, and it is the intensification of the daily
experience (such as self-identity). Their viewpoint echoes with what Richard and Wilson (2004) concluded in their book, as “modern backpacking involves elements of both extension and reversal (deep cultural experiences, ritualistic behavior, and culture shock).”
Figure 2-1: The conceptual model of the tourist experience
(Source: Quan and Wang, 2004)
To conclude, they pointed out that “tourism is in a sense involved in our aesthetic or sensual existence.” Urry (2002, p146), in his book “The Tourist Gaze”, also suggested
Peak Touristic
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that “tourism should involve various sensescapes, such as soundscapes, smellscapes, tastescapes, geography of touch, in addition to landscapes.” This echoes what is emphasized in the theories of experiential marketing.
Further, Mossberg (2007) proposed a marketing approach to the tourist experience.
This is a precursor to her research a year later finding that the facilitators of an
extraordinary tourist experience are “involvement, co-creation, and guide” (Mossberg, 2008). Factors influencing the tourist experience are illustrated as figure 2-2 shows.
Figure 2-2: Proposed factors influencing the consumer experience within the context of tourism (Source: Mossberg, 2007)
This framework further revised Quan and Wang (2004)’s and provided the
influential factors of tourist experiences. These selected factors are further explained in the following for its importance of tourist experience.
Daily routine Experiences
Tourist Experiences
Personnel
Other Tourists
Products/
Souvenirs Physical
Environment
Theme/story
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‧ The effects of physical environment
The ambient elements are stressed. The pioneering work of Kotler (1973) on atmospherics as a marketing tool was a starting point for discussions concerning environmental influences on consumer behavior. Another inspiration was the
The ambient elements are stressed. The pioneering work of Kotler (1973) on atmospherics as a marketing tool was a starting point for discussions concerning environmental influences on consumer behavior. Another inspiration was the