Tourism and retail transactions: Lessons from the Porsche experience

Abstract

The relationship between tourism and shopping is relatively well understood. Conversely, the relationship between tourism and retailing is not. The difference between ‘retailing’ and ‘shopping’ is not just a semantic one, but one with major conceptual implications. Through the case of Porsche’s latest model, this paper offers a reading of the connections between tourism, shopping and retailing. A supply-side, retailer-focused perspective contributes a deeper understanding of tourist shopping, revealing as it does the social relations of exchange in tourism shopping episodes, different types of tourist shopper and how cars and other commodities may be usefully deployed to develop enduring, longterm destination marketing themes.