Evolution and Future Development of the Food Experience for Made in Italy and Japanese Products

Guided by the results of a preliminary analysis on the effects of the pandemic on international markets, possible and foreseeable future scenarios have been imagined and investigated. With a special focus on Italy and Japan, we will analyse the innovative trends in the world of food that will guide future changes and developments, highlighting new approaches to consumption, the challenges to be faced in the new normal and the opportunities to be seized, under the perspective of the online approach. The objective of this speech is to investigate the evolution of the food experience for Made in Italy and Japanese products, identifying affinities and possible synergies between food and cultural styles, sharing points of reflection for strategic business development.

Food Experience Design to Prevent Unintended Consequences and Improve Well-being

This article introduces a novel and comprehensive conceptual framework for designing innovative food experiences that enhance food well-being. We call this framework the novel food experience design. It supports managers in cocreating customer-centric food experiences to limit unintended detrimental consequences and enhance individual and societal food well-being. The novel food experience design (1) employs a systemic (vs. endemic) approach to the innovation process and (2) promotes prioritizing ethical decision-making alongside economic decision-making. Building on insights derived from ecosystem theory and the ethical principles literature, we develop four fundamental propositions to innovate food experiences: do no harm, do good, ensure autonomy, and ensure fairness. Our framework promotes higher levels of individual and societal food well-being than restricted food design innovations, preventing unintended consequences. Finally, we illuminate the implications for service research and practice.

A qualitative study of antecedents of enduring involvement and its role in dining experiences of tourists

Purpose Considering the importance of involvement in experience, this paper aims to understand what factors lead to enduring involvement and how this type of involvement influences the food experience of tourists in the restaurant context. Design/methodology/approach Twenty tourists who had a dining experience in the restaurants of Queenstown, New Zealand were interviewed using the purposive sampling method. Findings Using manual coding, 11 factors were found to contribute to enduring involvement. The findings also showed that enduing involvement influenced the food experience of tourists in a positive way including four consequences. Research limitations/implications The research is limited to the restaurants of a specific destination and the findings should be generalised with caution. It, however, contributes to the existing research on involvement and experience in the hospitality and tourism literatures. Practical implications The findings provide guidelines on how restaurateurs understand the tourists’ perceptions and evaluations of their offerings to improve the dining experiences and manage their businesses effectively. Originality/value Previous research has not offered an understanding of what factors contribute to enduring involvement in the hospitality and tourism literatures and how this involvement impacts dining experiences of tourists.

Co-creation experience and foodscape in tourism: A case study of Yogyakarta

<p>Research focusing on co-creation experience in tourism has seen a significant increase in the last decade considering its importance as a basis for experiential value creation and future innovation. Co-creation experience concept is deeply related to food tourism because this type of tourism is about experiencing food and its associations with environments and people. The idea of foodscape is widely used in many studies to understand the connections between food, environments, and people. However, the ideas remain limited to be found in tourism studies in particular food tourism. Thus, investigating the linkage between the concepts of co-creation experience and foodscape is an interesting area of research. As such, this thesis aims to investigate how co-creation experience influences and creates foodscape in a food tourism destination. This research uses Yogyakarta, Indonesia as a basis to explore the construct of foodscape, co-creation tourism experience components that contribute to shaping foodscape, and how these components influence and create foodscape. The literature on food experience in tourism, co-creation experience, food tourism, and foodscape lays the theoretical foundation for this research. This research uses case study methodology and is based on collections of secondary data, observations, and interviews with food tourism suppliers and international tourists. The findings of this study are divided into three key areas. First, this study identifies five foodscape constructs: tangible and intangible environments, social interactions, food quality, price, and divergence. Second, the co-creation experience that shape foodscape is divided into three components: engagement, personalization, and co-production. It finds that these components center on experience environment and experience involvement. Third, this study finds that each co-creation experience components influence and create foodscape through new food offerings inventions, authenticity seeking, and attraction, facilities, and activities. This research contributes to understanding the dynamic nature of foodscape and the components of co-creation experience in the context of food tourism. It also develops our understanding of connections between co-creation experience and foodscape of the food tourism destination. As such, for academia, the research result can be used as a cornerstone for further studies in the related fields. Then, for practitioners, the findings may be useful to manage the construction of foodscape through co-creation experience.</p>

Co-creation experience and foodscape in tourism: A case study of Yogyakarta

<p>Research focusing on co-creation experience in tourism has seen a significant increase in the last decade considering its importance as a basis for experiential value creation and future innovation. Co-creation experience concept is deeply related to food tourism because this type of tourism is about experiencing food and its associations with environments and people. The idea of foodscape is widely used in many studies to understand the connections between food, environments, and people. However, the ideas remain limited to be found in tourism studies in particular food tourism. Thus, investigating the linkage between the concepts of co-creation experience and foodscape is an interesting area of research. As such, this thesis aims to investigate how co-creation experience influences and creates foodscape in a food tourism destination. This research uses Yogyakarta, Indonesia as a basis to explore the construct of foodscape, co-creation tourism experience components that contribute to shaping foodscape, and how these components influence and create foodscape. The literature on food experience in tourism, co-creation experience, food tourism, and foodscape lays the theoretical foundation for this research. This research uses case study methodology and is based on collections of secondary data, observations, and interviews with food tourism suppliers and international tourists. The findings of this study are divided into three key areas. First, this study identifies five foodscape constructs: tangible and intangible environments, social interactions, food quality, price, and divergence. Second, the co-creation experience that shape foodscape is divided into three components: engagement, personalization, and co-production. It finds that these components center on experience environment and experience involvement. Third, this study finds that each co-creation experience components influence and create foodscape through new food offerings inventions, authenticity seeking, and attraction, facilities, and activities. This research contributes to understanding the dynamic nature of foodscape and the components of co-creation experience in the context of food tourism. It also develops our understanding of connections between co-creation experience and foodscape of the food tourism destination. As such, for academia, the research result can be used as a cornerstone for further studies in the related fields. Then, for practitioners, the findings may be useful to manage the construction of foodscape through co-creation experience.</p>

Mapping Tourists’ Destination (Dis)Satisfaction Attributes with User-Generated Content

Although the tourism industry has increasingly used social media, there has been little empirical research in terms of the attributes of tourist satisfaction and dissatisfaction with user-generated contents. The purpose of this study is to explore the attributes of tourist satisfaction and dissatisfaction through user-generated contents. We collected data from online review platforms. Our data include historical online reviews, names of reviewers, ratings, location, helpful votes, date of visits, and contributions. In terms of results, the study found 30 key topics related to tourist satisfaction and dissatisfaction. Additionally, we found three clusters (i.e., holiday experience, attractions and facilities, and food experience). Lastly, we that suggested rating levels are different based on the type of tourists (i.e., domestic and international). This study provides discussions and implications for tourism research and industry practices.

Travelers’ Psychological Comfort with Local Food Experiences and Place Attachment

Travelers’ engagement with local food at a foreign destination could be overwhelming and affect their overall travel experience. This study investigates the role travelers’ psychological comfort with local food plays in influencing the development of their place attachment to a destination. The study utilized survey data sampled from Korean and American travelers who had visited China and found that travelers’ place attachment is positively and significantly influenced by their psychological comfort with food, interaction with service providers, and atmospherics. The findings also reveal that Korean and American travelers differ in the degree to which comfort affects their place attachment. These and other findings of the study bring attention to the comfort factor of travelers’ food experience, thus complementing previous research that tended to emphasize the novelty value of local cuisines.

Tracing multisensory food experiences on Twitter

How a food, or a dish, is named and how its components and attributes are described can all influence the perception and the enjoyment of the food. Therefore, tracing patterns in food descriptions and determining their role can be of value. The aims of this study were the following: (1) to describe the multisensory food experience as represented in microblog entries concerning food and drink on Twitter, (2) to provide an overview of the changes in the above-mentioned food representations during the period 2011–20, and (3) to contribute to a broader understanding of the human–food relationship as reflected on social media – in this case Twitter – and outline its potential utility for the research field of gastrophysics. The combinations of various multisensory attributes co-occurring in a tweet (which we term ‘collocations’) found in the Twitter corpus were examined through the categories of texture, colour, taste, smell/odour, shape and sound. We mapped the collocations of the 20–25 most frequently mentioned food items and their multisensory experience pairings over time. Such time-based knowledge led to a better understanding of the multisensory experience triggers as reflected on Twitter. By analysing the multisensory experience’s frequency of occurrence, we could conclude that the category of colour is the dominant one, while textural, olfactory and auditory collocations with food are rare. In most of the cases, food tweets appear to render a food experience ‘tasty’, ‘good’ and ‘interesting’.

The genetics of eating behaviors: research in the age of COVID-19

How much pleasure we take in eating is more than just how much we enjoy the taste of food. Food involvement - the amount of time we spend on food beyond the immediate act of eating and tasting - is key to the human food experience. We took a biological approach to test whether food-related behaviors, together capturing food involvement, have genetic components and are partly due to inherited variation. We collected data via an internet survey from a genetically informative sample of 419 adult twins (114 monozygotic twin pairs, 31 dizygotic twin pairs, and 129 singletons). Because we conducted this research during the pandemic, we also ascertained how many participants had experienced COVID-19-associated loss of taste and smell. Since these respondents had previously participated in research in person, we measured their level of engagement to evaluate the quality of their online responses. Additive genetics explained 16-44% of the variation in some measures of food involvement, most prominently various aspects of cooking, suggesting some features of the human food experience may be inborn. Other features reflected shared (early) environment, captured by respondents' twin status. About 6% of participants had a history of COVID-19 infection, many with transitory taste and smell loss, but all but one had recovered before the survey. Overall, these results suggest that people may have inborn as well as learned variations in their involvement with food. We also learned to adapt to research during a pandemic by considering COVID-19 status and measuring engagement in online studies of human eating behavior.