Shopping experiences: International tourists in Beijing's Silk Market
Introduction
As Timothy (2005) observes, shopping by tourists has multiple goals and takes many forms. Tourists may spend considerable discretionary holiday time in searching for bargains for themselves, hunting for gifts for others or simply ‘window shopping.’ For international tourists, the process of purchasing goods and local products is often an interesting social process representing a specific form of engagement with local citizens. Further, the shopping environment and context in which the purchase is made may be a critical stimulus to spend money. For example, in Asia, traditional markets and tourists shopping streets are prime places of engagement for tourists and local vendors. Shopping has been and is, therefore, a fertile subject of exploration for tourism researchers, not just in an economic sense but also in terms of tourists' motives and social encounters.
In the contemporary tourism world, China attracts much attention from destination marketing organisations and tourism researchers because it generates large numbers of tourists with high expenditures for many other destinations (UNWTO, 2013). The growing size of the Chinese middle classes, their increasing mobility and, most importantly, their considerable ability to consume have been widely acknowledged (Arlt, 2013, Sparks and Pan, 2009, Xu and McGehee, 2012). At the same time, China is also an important tourist receiving country. In 2012, China attracted 57.7 million international arrivals and was ranked as the third highest tourist receiving destination. It is fourth in terms of tourism receipts (US$ 50 billion) (UNWTO, 2013). However, little research about international tourists' experiences and expenditures in China has been undertaken. This research addresses this topic by exploring international tourists' shopping experience in Beijing's Silk Market – the most visited tourist market in China.
Section snippets
Literature review
In this section, three sets of ideas will be reviewed: literature on tourist shopping, Chinese inbound tourism, and undertaking tourism experience research in the digital era. The first two pertain to the subject of the research whereas the third has implications for the research methods that are adopted. Research opportunities will be identified in each part of review and then will be synthesized as the basis for the current research. Research aims will then be identified at the end of this
Beijing's Silk Market
The research context for this study is China's most well-known market among international tourists, the Silk Street Pearl Market in Beijing (hereafter called the Silk Market). The Silk Market is in close proximity to the Jianguo Hotel, China's first joint-venture hotel which attracts an international clientele, and can be accessed by the adjacent Yong'anli subway station. This market receives more than 15 million tourists every year, with more than 80% of them being international tourists. The
Findings
Forty-four concepts were identified by the Leximancer program at the first stage as being present in the reviews. Not all of these concepts are presented in the subsequent results for it is necessary to fine tune the major concept list (Crofts & Bisman, 2010). This was not conducted arbitrarily but, rather, was based on co-occurrence frequency as well as a careful assessment of the meaning of the identified concepts. In detail, words or concepts from the analysis that were simply destination
Discussion and conclusion
The role of shopping as a leisure activity and as an important component of many tourist experiences has been widely acknowledged (Getz, 1993, Swanson and Timothy, 2012, Timothy, 2005). Various tourist shopping experiences have been studied in a variety of locations (Murphy et al., 2011, Park et al., 2010, Xu and McGehee, 2012). This study contributes to the literature in four ways: it examines one of most popular international tourism destinations where few studies of visitors' motivations and
Mao-Ying Wu is Lecturer in Tourism, School of Management, Zhejiang University, China. She gained her Ph.D degree at James Cook University, Australia. She is interested in the well-being of tourism communities, tourists in emerging markets, and tourist–host interaction in cross cultural contexts.
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Mao-Ying Wu is Lecturer in Tourism, School of Management, Zhejiang University, China. She gained her Ph.D degree at James Cook University, Australia. She is interested in the well-being of tourism communities, tourists in emerging markets, and tourist–host interaction in cross cultural contexts.
Geoffrey Wall is an Adjunct Professor of Geography and Environmental Management at University of Waterloo, Canada. He is active in research and is involved in a number of international projects in Asia, particularly mainland China and Taiwan.
Philip L. Pearce is the Foundation Professor of Tourism, School of Business, James Cook University, Australia. He is fundamentally interested in the behaviour and experience of tourists and tourist–host interaction.