An experiential approach to the consumption of local food products by tourists: Proposing a typology of experiences

Résumé 0

Local food is a major ecological and economic issue. Tourists – being temporary consumers on a territory – participate in dynamizing the local economy of their host destination. By using the experiential consumption framework, our study proposes to expand the body of work on tourism experience and on local food purchasing with a four-dimension typology to describe the different forms of local food purchasing by tourists. Based on semi-structured interviews, the research shows that tourists’ consumption of local food products can be clustered into four types of experiences: a home-comfort extension experience; a utilitarian experience; an immersive experience; and an attraction-oriented experience. These experiences represent different opportunities to target in order to stimulate tourists’ local food purchases on a territory.