THE EXPERIENCE ECONOMY APPROACH - AN EMPIRICAL EXAMINATION IN WINE INDUSTRY

Abstract

The purpose of this paper is to analyze the four realms of experience economy model (education, entertainment, escapism, and esthetic) and to examine their impact on wine tourists’ arousal, memory and loyalty. The experience economy has recently emerged as a relevant framework for understanding the consumers’ experience across different industries. Wineries are facing new challenges where tourists are in search for exciting, unique, and memorable experiences. Consequently, wine institutions should strive to create desirable experiential environment as an essential source of differentiation and competitive advantage on the market. Data were collected from online surveys completed by 158 wine tourists in Macedonia. This study employed multiple regression analyses to test the developed hypotheses. The obtained results indicate that there is a significant and positive relationship among education and esthetics as experience dimensions and arousal and memory, separately. The others two experience dimensions are not significantly related neither to arousal, nor to memory. The results also indicate that loyalty is significantly and positively determined by entertainment and negatively influenced by escapism. The obtained results suggest that Macedonian wineries should emphasis the educational and esthetic aspects in their tourist offers in order to improve tourists’ arousal and memory. Understanding the concept of experience economy within the wine industry will lead to contemporary applications for all the involved parties.