Chapter 7 consumers

Source: adapted from UNWTO (2017).

development of standardized tourist resorts along the Mediterranean coast but also on the Black Sea and in the Alps.

As with consumption trends more generally (see Table 7.1), the tourist industry has changed significantly in recent decades, becoming more ‘post-Fordist’ i_n nature. More individualized consumption patterns have become apparent in tour­ism as they have in many other consumer-oriented industries. Most importantly there has been something of a rejection of mass tourism from middle-class con­sumers who now seek a wider range of tourism experiences, driving growth in a number of areas, including:

• 
  Urban and heritage tourism: urban tourism, often undertaken in short trips, lias grown rapidly. As a result, tourism has become central to the economic development strategies of many towns and cities, in particular through what can be thought of as ‘culture-led¹ development. Here, an overlapping complex of tourist, cultural, and creative sectors - encompassing museums, galleries, theatres, the arts, the media, architecture, and design - are seen to be the key drivers of growth. These amenities, and associated services such as restaurants, clubs, and bars, blur the distinctions between tourism and leisure in that, they are used by residents and visitors alike. In particular, post-industrial cities in North America and Western Europe have turned to this model of growth to replace manufacturing jobs lost in the 1970s and 1980s. As noted in Chapter 3, old industrial zones within cities have been redeveloped into shopping malls, heritage sites, conference and exhibition centres, entertainment districts, and arts and cultural quarters as a consumption-based economy is carved from the remnants of an industrial one (see Figure 7.10a and b).
  
• 
  Mega-event tourism: these processes of urban regeneration can be given a boost by cities hosting large-scale one-off events that attract significant numbers of visitors, such as a World Expo (e.g. Milan, 2015) or Olympic Games (e.g. Rio de Janeiro, 2016). The Barcelona Olympics of 1992 and the associated revitali­zation of its built environment are widely seen to have played a central role in Barcelona becoming one of the leading tourist cities in Europe. The Olympics gave planners and politicians the opportunity to undertake large-scale public works, for example opening up the city’s waterfront as a consumption space.
  
• 
  Theme park tourism: here visitors pay for admission to an entirely themed complex, placing particular emphasis on the architecture and its symbolism. At the heart of the theme park model is the consumption of multi-sensory experiences which may combine simulated environments (e.g. natural, cul­tural, historical, or technological); the humanizing of those environments by live interpretations, performances, and commentaries (e.g. re-enactments of historical events); state-of-the-art technological devices (e.g. films, rides, and games); and themed exhibits and eating places. The focus of the global theme park industry is increasingly turning to Asia, as developers seek to benefit from the rapidly growing middle classes in many Asian markets.
  

Rcotourism: this has been defined by the International Ecotourism Society as ‘responsible travel to natural areas that conserves the environment and improves the well-being of local people’. Ecotourism is concerned with enjoy­ing the natural environment through low impact and sustainable activities, such as trekking and animal/bird watching. It is associated with certain kind of relatively wealthy tourists and also with certain destinations that are rich in natural amenities, such as Costa Rica, Iceland, and New Zealand.




Figure 7.10 Urban and heritage tourism: (a) culture-led redevelopment - the waterfront in Bilbao, Spain and (b) reclaimed industrial heritage - Legoland in Duisburg, Germany Source: the authors.

tion, shopping, entertainment, education, and sport. Chinese tourists, for exam] pie, are renowned for combining their travel with extensive purchases of branded goods. Another has been the proliferation of places and local economies that now depend, to a greater or lesser extent, on tourism-cum-leisure revenues.

Accordingly, state agencies and businesses involved in promoting and selling tourism have sought to shape distinctive images of their localities through place- marketing campaigns. In these campaigns, places are presented to appeal to par­ticular types of tourists who may wish to consume different aspects of those places including cultural heritage and the natural environment. These place-marketing campaigns can operate at a number of different spatial scales, including an indi­vidual street (e.g. Chicago’s‘Magnificent Mile’ of shops), a district (e.g.'The Rocks’ district of Sydney), a city (e.g. ‘Visit Manchester"), a region (e.g. the Lords of the Rings ‘Trilogy Trail’ in southern New Zealand), or a national economy. An exam­ple of the latter is the long-running ‘Magical Kenya’ campaign, designed to pro­mote Kenya’s undoubted attractions to international tourists (see Figure 7.11), F,ach poster in the series bears the phrase ‘Jambo! Welcome to magical Kenya’ (Jambo means hello in Swahili). The logo uses the colours of the Kenyan flag and the arch in the middle represents a necklace from the Masai people, one of Kenya’s most famous tribal groups. Other images in the series show a tropical beach, a

Figure 7.11 Magical Kenya Source: magicalkenya.com.

■ nan brandishing a huge catch and a balloon passing over a beautiful land- jP a_{s w}jth all place-marketing campaigns, however, it is a particular sets of '^чС*¹' ! ч of Kenya that are presented to the wider world. This is a Kenya of big "" T'l'iP^L'^s’ P^r'^st*^ne beaches, wild animals, stunning vistas, and traditional tribal eople There is understandably no reference to poverty or the sprawling Kibera slunis of Nairobi. The wider point here is that crafting and disseminating a place •„_rige is л crucial component of the economic development strategies of localities hat need to attract visitors in order to fuel their tourism and recreation sectors.

6. 
   Summary
   

This chapter has explored different aspects of the geographies of retailing and consumption. We started by advocating a sociocultural perspective on consump­tion dynamics that, while recognizing the power of capitalist corporations in structuring our consumption options and choices, affords consumers a significant degree of agency as they go about constructing their identities through the pur­chase and subsequent use of commodities. Three arguments were then developed in the subsequent analysis. First, we profiled the changing patterns of where retail­ing, the starting point for many consumption processes, takes place. At the global scale, store and sourcing networks are increasingly coordinated by a cadre of large retail transnational corporations. At the national scale, the suburb has risen to challenge the city centre as the pre-eminent site of retailing in contemporary society, but this general trend conceals complex patterns of decentralization and recentralization that vary across different territories. The physical spaces of retail­ing also increasingly coexist with online retail spaces, while informal retailing at the neighbourhood level remains as a central component of daily consumption practices for much of the world’s population.

Second, we profiled the different ways in which consumption processes are inherently geographical. On the one hand, the ability of consumers to engage in symbolic consumption and identity construction is very unevenly distributed, both socially and spatially, across the global economy. These vitally important spatial patterns of consumer segmentation merit further investigation by economic geog­raphers. On the other hand, where they do occur, processes of identity formation are often place-specific, with commodities assuming different meanings in different sociocultural contexts. Consumers, rather than passively just using the products offered by retailers, seek to reinterpret and even subvert the intended meaning of commodities in geographically variable ways. However, as arenas of consumption, places should not be seen as self-contained, but open to a range of cultural influ­ences circulating through global networks of various kinds. Third, we have looked beyond the place specificities of consumption to think about how places themselves are consumed through leisure and tourism practices. As the tourism industry continues to develop, an ever-widening variety of places are becoming

involved in such activities and place-marketing has become an integral part of th

economic development strategies of many cities, regions, and countries.

Notes on the references

• 
  Wrigley and I.owe (2002), Mansvelt (2005, 2012), Wrigley (2009), Miles (2010), Crewe (201 I), and Cook and Crang (2016) deliver student-friendly reviews of the best geographical work on retail and consumption. Coe and Wrigley (2007,2018) offer overviews of the globalization of retailing from an economic-geographical perspective. For a classic study of Wal-Mart’s exit Irom Germany, see Christopherson (2007).
  
• 
  Although neither are geographers, Trentmann (2016) and Warde (2017) offer impressive recent overviews of the nature of consumption from empirical and theoretical perspectives, respectively. On the evolving nature of consumption in the Global South, see Kaplinsky and Farooki (2010).
  
• 
  Williams (2009) and Flail and Page (2014) provide comprehensive accounts of the changing nature of tourism and leisure places.
  

Sample essay questions

• 
  Why is consumption such a geographically variable process?
  
• 
  How are patterns of retail globalization evolving?
  
• 
  Why are there growing tendencies for the recentralization of retailing at the urban scale?
  
• 
  How do individuals use consumption to develop place-based identities?
  
• 
  What arc the limits to talking about ‘consumers’ as a general category?
  
• 
  In what ways can places themselves be consumed through travel and tourism?
  

Resources for further learning

• 
  Deloitte’s annual Global Powers of Retailing report provides a detailed over­view of the world’s largest 250 retailers (http://www.deloitte.com/view/en_US/ us/Industries/Retail-Distribution/index.htm).
  
• 
  The websites of leading global retailers, such as Wal-Mart (www.walmartstores. com), Carrefour (www.carrefour.com), and IKEA (www.ikea.com), provide a range of information on their global store operations.
  
• 
  Similarly, the websites for regional or ‘mega’ malls, such as Manchester’s Trafford Centre (https://intu.co.uk/traffordcentre) and Minneapolis’ Mall of America (www.mallofamerica.com), give some sense of what is on offer at such shopping attractions.
  

_wWw unwto.org: the website of the World Tourism Organization hosts a huge

• 
  range of materials about the global tourism industry. See also the World Travel & Tourism Council (WITC): www.wttc.org.
  

References

Berry, B.J.l.., Cutler, I., Draine, E.H. et al. (1976). Chicago: Transformations of an Urban System. Cambridge, MA: Ballinger.

Boiirdieu. P. (1⁴K4). Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgment of Taste. Cambridge, МЛ: Harvard University Press.

Christopherson, S. (2007). Barriers to ‘US style’ lean retailing: the case of Wal-Mart's failure in Germany. Journal of Economic Geography 7: 45 1-469.

Coe, N. M. and Wrigley, N. (2007). Host economy impacts of retail TNCs: the research agenda, journal of Economic Geography 7: 341-371.

Coe, N. M. and Wrigley, N. (2018). Towards new economic geographies of retail globaliza­tion. In: The Neu¹ Oxford Handbook of Economic Geography (eds. G.L. Clark, M.P. Feldman, M. S. Gertler and D. Wojdk), 427-447. Oxford: OUP.

Conk, I. and Crang, P. (2016). Consumption and its geographies. In: An Introduction to Human Geography, 5c (eds. P. Daniels, M. Bradshaw, D. Shaw, et al.), 379-396. Harlow: Pearson Education.

Crewe, 1.. (2011). Geographies of retailing and consumption: the shopping list compen­dium. In: The Sage Handbook of Economic Geography (eds. A. Leyshon, R. Lee, L. McDowell and P. Sunley), 305-321. London: Sage.

Deloitte (2018). 2018 Global Powers of Retailing. www2.deIoitte.com (accessed 8 May 2018).