"Shopping tourism, retailing and leisure/by"

Shopping is perhaps the most ubiquitous of all tourist activities and an extremely important leisure pursuit, yet its complexities, meanings and practices are not well understood. This book presents a broad and comprehensive examination of the phenomenon of shopping as a tourist and leisure activity. Issues related to consumption and identity are identified as they relate to leisure and tourism. Traditionally, most research on shopping has highlighted the activity's utilitarian and economic functions; however, this work also examines the hedonistic, or leisure motivations and contexts.

Many issues and concepts are examined in detail in this work under the scope of leisure versus work in shopping and consumption. Issues covered include shopping as a form of tourism and motivation for travel, shopping as a secondary attraction, or an activity undertaken while travelling for other reasons, and souvenirs as a crucial part the consumptive behaviour of tourists. This book explores the issues and of implications of various shopping and retail venues in tourism. It also examines management issues related to location, shop design, merchandising, customer service and human resources. Several locations where shopping dominates much of the tourism scene are looked at in detail.