The influence of staged experiences on delightedness and behavioral intentions

The tourism and hospitably industry has focused on customer service and satisfaction as their standard for increasing market share and financial success. During the last decade, industry leaders have shifted from this traditional orientation to customer delightedness in an attempt to achieve greater market share in an increasingly competitive economic environment. Pine and Gilmore introduced a model for staging experiences as the fourth economic model which consists of themeing as a way to create staged experiences. There are numerous studies exploring service quality and satisfaction, but almost no research exists exploring the implications of staging experiences and delightedness in the tourism and hospitality industry. A fully staged tour, partially staged tour, and nonstaged tour, which incorporated varied elements in Pine and Gilmore's model, was created at a heritage park to investigate if staging experiences had an impact on customers' levels of delightedness and subsequently if delightedness was significantly correlated with intention to return and recommend. A total of 228 individuals participated in the study; 76 participated in the fully staged tour, 83 in the partially staged tour, and 69 in the nonstaged tour. A delightedness measure and questions measuring intention to return and intention to recommend were used to measure delightedness and behavioral intentions. The results indicated that staging experiences has a significant impact on delightedness. Delightedness was also shown to be correlated with intention to return and intention to recommend.