Entrepreneurship Within Airside Food and Beverage Outlet Patronage: The Creation of Ecosystems Using Outlet Context and Passengers’ Emotions

Abstract

In this chapter, the authors investigate the experiences of air passengers in the airside setting of commercial airports. Whilst the concept of liminality has found increased interest in tourism studies, only few studies have contextualized the airside experience as a liminal one. We investigate the role of food and beverage (F&B) consumption in this context as well as factors influencing F&B outlet patronage intentions. Using a European non-hub commercial airport as practical unit, we applied a mixed methods single case-study methodology to investigate F&B outlet choice in the airside setting. It becomes evident that perceptions of liminality play an important role in this context. Findings support the claim that the airport environment constitutes a special context, an encapsuled or protected space; not only for passengers, but also for employees alike. Whilst airports have a certain uniformity to regular travelers, infrequent travelers perceive air travel as an extraordinary activity, often paired with a certain uncertainty about related procedures. Evidence suggests that passengers’ emotional states play a key role in consumption decisions. Depending on travel purpose and direction, passengers showed differing consumption behaviors.

Understanding the airport airside area as a liminoid space and using the concept of boundary work for the transition between home and work realms (and back again) thus serves as a suitable frame of reference to help understand the phenomena that were observed and analyzed in this study. F&B consumption can then be understood to support the mental transition between home and work realms. Our findings thus allow linking the passenger clusters’ different consumption behavior to prevailing emotional states in their transgressions between work and home realm in the liminoid airside context.

Citation

Merkle, T., Tajeddini, K., Vlachos, I. and Keane, J. (2020), "Entrepreneurship Within Airside Food and Beverage Outlet Patronage: The Creation of Ecosystems Using Outlet Context and Passengers’ Emotions", Ratten, V. (Ed.) Entrepreneurship as Empowerment: Knowledge Spillovers and Entrepreneurial Ecosystems, Emerald Publishing Limited, Leeds, pp. 127-150. https://doi.org/10.1108/978-1-83982-550-720201010