Book reviews / Tourism Management 31 (2010) 447–451448

Creating Experiences in the Experience Economy, J. Sundbo,P. Darmer (Eds.). Edward Elgar, Cheltenham (2008). p. 262(hbk), ISBN: 978-1-84720-930-6

In compiling this book, the editors have produced a text whichconstantly challenges the reader and creates an experience, orseries of experiences of its own. What is presented is both chal-lenging and refreshing. It is a book which is about creating experi-ences and the 11 chapters (re)present this in different wayscritically exploring different contexts. The book is divided intothree sections covering Experience creation design; Managementof experience creation; and the consumer perception of experiencecreation. There is a wide range of material covered in the chapters,some moving beyond traditional definitions of the touristic but it isworth staying with the arguments about, for instance, video gamesas they reveal interesting complexities in the construction and byimplication the consumption of experience.

In tourism we have become accustomed to debates that look atstaging and accountability. What is of interest in this collection ishow the idea of staging has been broken down into front stagingand back staging. The traditional artistic notion of front staging isrepositioned through the analysis of the operations and processeswhich allow the front to be seen and to survive against the everincreasing experience of competition. The roles and processes of theback staging are fundamental to the sense and possibility of the expe-rience. It is an addition to the critical processes which applies well intourism and delivers insights that will serve not only to deepentourism but also events management literature if it is pursued.

It is clear that the work has shared a common thread and theexplorations of experience creation are informed by a relativelyshared theoretical perspective. This goes back to Pine and Gilmore(1999) and the terms are used consistently throughout the book.We are reminded (p6) the emphasis was placed on the ‘‘the impor-tance of the customer in experience and experience creation as theypoint out that ‘Experiences occur whenever a company intentionallyuses services as the stage and goods as props to engage the individual’(p.11). By this they mean that an experience occurs whenever compa-nies intentionally construct it to engage customers. The engagementof the customer in the experience also means that customers rarelyhave the same experience, even though it is the same experiencethey are experiencing.’’ As Sundbo and Darmer correctly observethis is because the individual experience is constructed through theinterplay of the companies and the customers and therefore will beconstructed differently by the different customers.

The chapters also demonstrate that although Pine and Gilmoreoffer a starting point, the authors have not been constrained bythe economic enterprise of the earlier work. The chapters happilyrecognise that experiences can be constructed commercially(both successfully for profit and not for profit) but also happen inless conventional settings. We move beyond the market pre-constructions of the customer and reach for the constructions ofthe consumer. The creation of experiences calls into play the rela-tionship between the constructors of the experiences and theconsumers of those experiences, both directly and indirectly.

One of the interesting things about this book is the process of itsown creation. The editors acknowledge funding from the EU SocialFund and this clearly helped to bring together a team of researchersfrom the Centre for Experience Research at Roskilde University andthe Centre for Leisure Management in Nykøbing Falster, Denmark.This creates a space for discussion, debate and elaboration of thecomplex ideas which underpin the creation of experiences. All

too often the conditions of contemporary scholarship militateagainst such collective academic enterprises and it is a pleasureto see how this experience allowed such creative expressions.

The focus of the working group is evident in all the accounts butthis does not produce a rigid framework as the authors demonstratea wide range of academic stimuli and contexts with references as farremoved as AA Milne and Winnie the Pooh and Proust sitting along-side Elias and Simmel and that is all in one chapter. That it isa chapter on the food and eating experience may be even moresurprising! Jacobsen delivers a series of very telling observationsabout the food culture and the cultures of food, which are some-times uncomfortable but are always worth thinking through. Itwas disappointing that more emphasis was not given to the struc-tural forces in experience, particularly gender and capital (bothfinancial and cultural) are lacking from the accounts.

Another highlight to emerge from the book is the way that theauthors involved have drawn on a very wide range of methods toproduce the studies of experience. This becomes an emergentstrength of the book as the reader is able to experience the conceptfrom a range of perspectives. Laursen’s Chapter 4 on ‘What makesRome?’ is immensely strengthened by the illustrations, which arereproductions of the author’s own drawings which capture the senseof his own experience almost more powerfully than his analyticaltext. Darmer’s account of entrepreneurs in music (Chapter 7) adoptsa story telling perspective to work through one encounter with anindependent music entrepreneur. His quest to add passion to thelist of the drivers of entrepreneurial behaviour is one which shouldbe supported and then fully tested by looking at a wider range ofentrepreneurs – it may be that entrepreneurs in culture and heritagearenas are the same as other types of entrepreneurs but it might alsobe the case that they could be different. The discussion here cannotbe – and was not intended to be – conclusive but it demonstratesagain how these chapters tap into and challenge some of theconcepts being handled in the more mainstream tourism literature.

To end on a slightly less favourable note, there is a fundamentalquestion which the book does not address but would make fora controversial chapter. This concerns the concept of experience itself.By the end of the book we have seen so many contexts analysed fortheir creation of and contribution to experience that it is temptingto sit back and say ‘so what?’ If everything is an experience, it certainlymakes experience an important topic to explore but does it makepossible to study it in a way which adds meaning to the experiencecreation processes. The book assumes that the crucial unit of analysisis the experience but in a multi core industry such as tourism there areimportant critical debates within the realms of the back staging thatfocussing on the experience itself would miss or conceal.

Please take this as an invitation to experience the worlds theauthors have constructed and to recognise your own contribution tothe experience of debating these ideas. No matter whether you agreewith the focus on the experience economy, I would argue that it is tobe hoped that the idea of working groups can be adopted more widelyand help to develop the critical faculties of the tourism academy.

Reference

Pine, J. B., & Gilmore, J. H. (1999). The experience economy. Boston: Harvard BusinessSchool Press.

Alan ClarkeUniversity of Pannonia, 8201 Veszprem, HungaryE-mail address: clarke@turizmus.uni-pannon.hu

doi:10.1016/j.tourman.2009.05.004