Watching the FIFA World Cup 2010 in England: the sojourner perspective

Recent years have seen an emergence of a varied academic literature focused on the football fan, with a wealth of studies exploring issues such as hooliganism, fan behaviour and fan identification. No research, however, has documented the experiences and perspectives of the international sojourner, who follows the televised tournament far away from the home country. This paper offers a contribution to the literature on fandom by focusing on the experiences of becoming a temporary fan among a sample of nine international students in England during the period of the 2010 FIFA World Cup. It shows the importance of the tournament for students away from their home nation, acting as a point of celebration and as a means of bringing sojourners of the same nationality together to support their team. It reveals how the tournament offered escape from stress, became a focal point for social interaction, provided the opportunity for recreation of home, and for the reinforcement of feelings of national identity.     

Going to the movies: cinema development in Singapore

Using readings of Foucault's heterotropia and Friedberg's imaginary mobility, this paper analyses movie-going as leisure practice. In highlighting the paucity of research in this area, the paper argues that such practice should be understood as a symbolic interaction between people's behaviour and the spaces that they occupy. This theorization is applied to Singapore, where per capita movie-going is amongst the highest in the world. The paper illustrates how, in Singapore, the development of cinemas has been used to underpin land use policies associated with the relocation of residential areas and social policies related to the growth in consumerism. While effectively alienating older audiences, the paper argues that the spatial and cultural metonymy of the cinema with other primary consumption sites – the mall and the fast food outlet – offers young people reassurance about the growing centrality of consumerism to contemporary social life in Singapore. We argue that the cinema offers a temporary escape from the regulation of social life – access to ‘deviant’ space. However, this same consumerism that facilitates such access simultaneously denotes conformity with the dominant ideology: acceptance of the heterotropic possibilities – and limitations – of cinema and movie-going as leisure practice.     

Experiential Marketing and Long-Term Sales

This study investigates the ability of winery tasting rooms to create brand awareness and build long-term brand loyalty. Specifically, we test the conjecture that if tasting rooms create brand awareness and a pleasurable tasting room experience, then those visitors are more likely to recognize and seek out those brands once they leave the tasting room. To measure these effects, we exploit differences in tasting room characteristics to conduct a series of natural experiments from which we analyze differences in off-premise retail sales away from the tasting room. We use scan data on wine sold off-premise through traditional retail outlets to then test for differences among tasting room characteristics. Our results indicate that tasting rooms act as a form of experiential marketing for wineries, creating brand awareness and generating greater growth in off-premise retail sales. Finally, we address issues of endogeneity and unobserved heterogeneity as potential sources of bias.     

Participation and retention in a green tourism certification scheme

Tourism certification schemes offer a transitional procedure to a more transparent and sustainable tourism product. Engaging current and previous Green Tourism Business Scheme (GTBS) members in Scotland, this research addresses issues of retention affecting progression of sustainable tourism supply. Quantitative analysis tracking GTBS members over three time points reveals 2% growth but conceals significant flux in membership. Retention was calculated at 66%, where business type analysis discloses distinct issues among accommodation providers with 42% departing the scheme. Decline is greatest among B&;Bs and guesthouses (?61%), where poor and falling recruitment coincides with very poor retention (33%). Our analysis demonstrates that slow growth in membership is primarily a result of enterprises choosing to leave the scheme, rather than poor recruitment. Questionnaires from past and present GTBS members (n = 109) confirm the importance of personal pro-environmental philosophies and perceived business benefits in attracting members, yet anticipated benefits do not always materialise. The main reasons for leaving the GTBS relate to membership cost and unrealised benefits. Lack of scheme awareness, management, criteria, bureaucracy and time commitment were further departure factors. The paper offers some suggestions to address issues and enhance retention leading to sustainable growth among tourism certification schemes.     

Research note: religious doctrine and its influence on the choice to gamble as a leisure pastime among African American Methodists

This research note examines the relationship between adherence to religious doctrine and participation in gambling as a leisure pastime. In the United States, recreational gambling is a common leisure pastime for many African Americans. Our ideals about the value of gambling are often shaped within families, based on their lived experience with recreational gambling and also within religious communities. Two doctrinal statements from the Methodist strand of Protestantism provide critical assessment of gambling as a leisure pastime. This case study examined African American Methodists’ perceptions about religious doctrine that addresses gambling; their choice to gamble despite their familiarity with the doctrinal position of the Church; and the perception of gambling as a sinful leisure pursuit. Religious doctrine may deter some adherents from participating in gambling as a leisure pursuit but not everyone. Many can be familiar with religious doctrine, may not agree with it and will proceed to gamble. Finally, even if gambling is perceived as a sinful leisure activity, it concurrently can be viewed as a ‘harmless’ vice.     

Selling Versus Leasing of Durable Goods: The Impact on Marketing Channels

While many durable products are sold through intermediaries, there is limited understanding of how channel performance is influenced by transactions involving durable goods in a competitive market. In particular, extant research shows that intermediaries can significantly impact the leasing versus selling policy of a monopolistic manufacturer. This article seeks to fill that gap by examining the selling versus leasing choice of duopolistic manufacturers in the context of decentralized channels. Our analysis demonstrates that in addition to the unique equilibrium of selling, a prisoner's dilemma may arise where both manufacturers are better off if they were to lease their products.     

Producers Get Squeezed up the Farming Food Chain: A Theory of Crop Portfolio Composition and Land Use

There are a number of seemingly contradictory trends in the structure of American agriculture. For example, total revenues from agriculture in the United States continue to increase nearly every year, yet the total acreage of land in farms continues to decrease. This article presents an explanation using portfolio theory that is consistent both with the trends and with rational behavior of individual producers. The results have implications for commodity markets, land prices, and, in the long run, for the economic viability of American production agriculture.     

An Empirical Comparison of the Four Channel Flow Model and Adventure Experience Paradigm

The objective of this study was to conduct empirical comparisons between two models of optimal experience within an on-site whitewater kayaking setting using a modification of the Experience Sampling Method. Four concerns are examined: (1) differences in explanatory power between the four channel flow model and the Adventure Experience Paradigm, (2) convergent validity among measures used to determine conditions within these models, (3) differences among measures of perceived challenge and risk between test times of Class I-V river difficulty, and (4) differences among measures of perceived skill and competence between test times of Class I-V river difficulty. Questionnaires were administered in the Cheat River Canyon in West Virginia to 52 whitewater kayakers at eight sites of various levels of river difficulty. Data were analyzed at the experience level, rather than between subjects, using 409 experience sampling observations. Hypothesis testing, performed with statistical analyses (stepwise regression, correlations, and repeated measures ANOVA), suggested that the explanatory powers of the four channel flow model and Adventure Experience Paradigm were similar and indicated support for convergent and ecological validity of measures used to determine conditions within each of the two models.