To Örebro University

This exploratory article examines the role of the meal experience in the context of the postmodern conditions of marketing as well as customer value emergence and suggests a novel perspective on the commercial meal experience as being customer based. It focuses on how value is idiosyncratically formed, for the customer, based on what the customer experiences. The article draws attention to the need of changing perspectives from the producer to the customer to gain understanding on how value emerges for the customer within the commercial meal experience. It also presents the need for a dynamic understanding of the meal experience and argues that the current paradigm of understanding the meal is lacking due to it being an a priori construct.

Restaurant experiences are an important part of a destination’s service offer and restaurants play an important role for visitors’ well-being. High quality of food is essential, but feeling welcome, meeting skillful employees and enjoying the atmosphere are likewise important. Visitors’ experiences related to eating out are multifaceted and could be related to many aspects such as traveling for leisure or in business, meals as social and cultural events and eating out as an urban experience.

This project aims to regard the customer as a person who actively integrates different opportunities in order to create value in a specific context, a customer-dominant-view.

The purpose of this project is to examine drivers of business travellers’ resource integrating activities during their stay at a destination with a special focus on eating out.

Methodological an ethnographical inspired field study approach will be applied, in dialogue with a multidisciplinary research group and representatives from the industry.

The results will illustrate customers’ value creation and resource integration processes related to eating out activities, and give a holistic understanding of visitors’ drivers, interactions and activities regarding eating out. The results will contribute to the development of companies as well as destinations with regard to eating out and meals.