Nadia Belkaied

Composition of the Jury

Abstract

Our research emerged from a reflection on tourism consumption and the richness of the reactions it elicits due to the multitude of needs it fulfills. While cognitive, perceptual, sensory, and emotional processes have been extensively studied, we identified a gap in tourism marketing research regarding imaginative reactions. Geographers and sociologists of tourism, however, are unanimous about the close link between the tourism system and the imaginaries that fuel, shape, and guide it. Building on this, we decided to place the imaginary at the center of our analysis of the tourist-destination relationship by framing it within a postmodern-interpretive perspective. An initial qualitative method, netnography, allowed us to analyze the tourism imagination through three components: a representational component, a relational component (which encompasses social interaction and interaction with the place), and an identity-based component (which refers to self-awareness and self-image). This was supplemented by a life-narrative approach. This approach enabled us to identify three imaginative profiles (confirmed, intermediate, novice), each distinguished by a particular way of traveling as well as a perceived purpose of the trip. These imaginative profiles each correspond to a type of traveler (committed, balanced, recreational) and to a specific combination of the three components of the imagination. The use of the imagination in the context of tourism consumption is thus fully justified by the enrichment of tourism marketing research through concepts borrowed from related disciplines. From a managerial perspective, we propose the imaginative profile as a segmentation criterion. We believe, in fact, that adapting the marketing mix to the target imaginative profile(s) would create value.

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