Making sense of tourist shopping research: A critical review

Abstract

Shopping is a common activity for many tourists, but research into this phenomenon is piecemeal and fragmented. This paper provides a critical review of tourist shopping research with the aims of identifying progress, presenting a descriptive framework, and suggesting new areas and approaches for research. The paper identifies main themes in tourist shopping research based on a "4W2H" framework that examines who (segmentation), what (product), why (motivation), where (setting and service), how (behaviour and experience) and how much (expenditure). Attention then shifts to a review of conceptual, theoretical and methodological issues. The findings show that the area is dominated by quantitative studies and a reliance on four generic concepts – customer satisfaction, motivation, culture and attitude. A lack of appropriate and specific theoretical foundations is a major problem for the area and the paper concludes with a discussion of key topics that merit further attention and that could address this problem.