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Browsing by Author "Kang, Soo, committee member"

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    Exploring the culinary tourism experience: an investigation of the supply sector for brewery and restaurant owners
    (Colorado State University. Libraries, 2014) Minihan, Christina, author; Donnelly, Maureen, advisor; O'Leary, Joseph, advisor; Kang, Soo, committee member; Bright, Alan, committee member
    Tourists travel all over the world to taste different types of cuisine and create memorable experiences through them. Although cuisine can be the primary reason one travels; it plays a significant role in any tourist's daily routine. While the idea of culinary tourism has been around for decades, it has received limited research attention. The existing research primarily highlights the consumer aspects, with limited focus on the trade or supply realm. The purpose of this dissertation is to present an innovative study in the culinary tourism field that develops and tests a comprehensive culinary tourism experience model from the supply sector perspective. This dissertation includes three studies presented as potential journal articles. Chapter 1 explores a review of the current literature on culinary tourism. This chapter contains the general frameworks and models that have been proposed to date when considering culinary tourism and the theory on experience. Chapters 2 and 3 include qualitative analyses that test a proposed culinary tourism experience model through in-depth interviews from breweries and restaurant owners in Fort Collins, Colorado. The model encompasses the following 14 components: (a) learning and knowledge, (b) physical setting, (c) quality, (d) quantity, (e) service quality, (f) variety, (g) backstage access, (h) local culture, (i) senses beyond taste, (j) entertainment, (k) sustainability, (l) target market, (m) differentiation, (n) social media, and technology. The elements were selected from the results that emerged from the literature review, along with a pre-test. These elements were examined with owners and managers in terms of how the restaurants and breweries manage their operation and create a customer experience. Implications for future research and recommendations for improving this supply side approach to modeling the cuisine tourism experience are proposed.
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    Testing a model of customer service and satisfaction of a luxury wingshooting lodge experience
    (Colorado State University. Libraries, 2023) Franks, Todd, author; Bright, Alan, advisor; Kang, Soo, committee member; O'Leary, Joseph, committee member; Teel, Tara, committee member
    This paper explores the application of a customer service and satisfaction model from the outdoor recreation industry to a luxury wingshooting destination. Specifically, it investigates the possibility that domain-level satisfaction will mediate the specific relationship between customer service components and the guests' overall satisfaction with the luxury hunting lodge experience. Data were collected via quantitative self-administered surveys (n=525 completed surveys) that measured three levels of visitor satisfaction (26 individual service items, three service domains, and overall satisfaction), which were administered to guests at a luxury wingshooting destination over four South Dakota pheasant preserve hunting seasons (2017 - 2020) which run from September 1 until March 31 of the following year. This research tested the extent to which satisfaction across three domains (hunting, customer service, & facilities) mediated the influence of 26 individual service items in predicting overall satisfaction with the luxury hunting lodge experience. The 26 service items represented certain areas of satisfaction (domains), and the mediation analysis was limited to those specific domains. Results indicated that satisfaction with each of the three domains partially mediated the relationship between overall satisfaction with the luxury hunting lodge experience and the individual service items. Next, I combined all of the significant individual service items and their three satisfaction domains into one single regression model, with overall satisfaction with the luxury hunting lodge experience as the dependent variable. Of the ten significant service items and three service domains, only five variables proved to be significant, accounting for 76.8% of the explained variance in overall satisfaction with the luxury hunting lodge experience.