Workshop on Geolocational Mapping of Consumption

Workshop on Geolocational Mapping of Consumption

How is the tourism movement related to commercial consumption?

How are visitor flows and crowds shaping places and touristic trajectories? Geolocational tracking technologies (such as GPS trackers and other crowdsensing devices) offer new methods to map and manage mobile consumption in space and time. Recently, the Department of Marketing hosted the research network “Mapping the Beaten Track” (headed by Associate Professor Szilvia Gyimóthy) in a 3-day-workshop. The workshop concludes a two-year project, which (despite the pandemic) gathered new, empirically grounded studies on tourism mobility in different geographical settings. A multidisciplinary team of researchers and Ph.D. scholars presented results from innovative studies and experiments conducted in a range of rural  (Illulisaat, Grímsey, and Gotland) and metropolitan destinations (Palermo, Copenhagen, and Jerusalem).

Some of the published work sheds new light on the contested relationship between cruise tourists’ movement and onshore expenditures (https://doi.org/10.1016/j.annale.2022.100059), while others demonstrate the emotional dimensions of mobile consumption (based on electrodermal activity and eye-tracking). Together, the findings progress our conceptual understanding of the drivers and consequences of consumptive movement and offer important insights for planners and place marketers to mitigate harmful effects for host communities and environments alike.