Chopsticks Approach to Successful Cultural Tourism Marketing

People travel for all sort of reasons. Some travel for work. Some travel for holiday. Some travel for meeting their best friends. Irrespective of the reasons for traveling, there are at least two elements involved in the transaction—travelers and destination hosts. Similarly, in a chopsticks dinner environment, there are the eaters and the dishes. To effectively bring the food to the mouth, correct use of chopsticks is highly recommended. Chopsticks are a pair of eating utensils omnipresent in China, Korea, Japan, and Vietnam. Held between the thumb and fingers, chopsticks are used either for picking up food from common plates or for scooping rice into the mouth (Fam et al., 2009). No matter how well-crafted and aesthetically pleasing, a chopstick by itself is a meaningless and functionless stick; however, when joined to form a “relationship,’ chopsticks become a well-refined instrument that can show a symbol of love, interaction, and success.

Like the two pieces of sticks coming together, tourism marketers must first understand the values and beliefs embraced by tourists, and then design a suitable localized strategy to address their needs and wants. Chopsticks marketing is an international localized strategy (Fam, 2020). It involves not only understanding the local customs, traditions, and values but also ways of working with different stakeholders and networks such as government officials, religious bodies, suppliers, distributors, and consumers. The chopsticks analogy calls for the narrowing of the gap between the two sticks. The narrower the gap, the more likely that the user can pick the last grain of rice or peanut from the bowl.

In addition to understanding the cultural values of the target market, tourism marketers are advised to better understand why and how certain values influence consumer behaviors before building any marketing campaign. For instance, researchers found that Confucian ethics played an influencing role on consumer attitudes such as morality, respect for authority, harmony with nature, bonding, reciprocity, face-saving, trust, and even in the workplace. For instance, an employee is unlikely to be promoted if they are perceived to have neglected in caring for their parents. Advertising of funeral services, for example, is seen as distasteful, particularly in East Asia. This can amount to great disrespect to the living elders; however, in some Western societies, the buying of a funeral plan for a living parent is considered a good deed from a son to his parent. Similarly, because most Hindus believe that when a person dies their soul (atman) is reborn in a different body, advertising a funeral service is less offensive in India than it is in China. The eating habits of tourists often reflect their customs and traditions and may influence their tourist activities and experience. For example, Chinese, Japanese, Koreans, and other East Asian societies tend to use chopsticks for eating. In contrast, within the Hindu and Muslim societies, only the right hand is used for eating. Consequently, one challenge for tourism providers is appropriately packaging tangible and intangible cultural assets to meet tourists’ cultural and religious requirements and interests. In summary, the tourism Chopsticks Marketing framework calls for an appropriate alignment of the local market’s cultural values and practices with firm-level strategies. Be it human resource management, advertising, government directive, or religious edict, successful marketing depends on the skillful orchestration of firm-level tactics and strategies with extensive knowledge of the local market’s cultural values. Success will not happen overnight, but it will happen in the long run.

This special issue seeks to explore how tourism providers meet the demands of present-day tourists who on the one hand strive to see the world and on the other are constrained by religious and traditional obligations. Our special issue identified six strategic areas that we believe will reveal how the two parties (tourists and tourism providers) in their own ways deal with the complexity of understanding and keeping these tourists engaged. The six areas are the following: To what extant do customs, traditions, values, and religious belief influence the tourism providers’ selection of tangible and intangible assets for tourists? What priority should tourism providers place on ethics and etiquette when dealing with tourists from different cultural backgrounds, generation cohorts, and genders? Evidence of successful sustainable cultural tourism marketing campaigns in East Asia, Middle East, Africa, Europe, and Latin America. What are the challenges and future for halal-friendly tourism services? Should tourism providers aim to immerse tourists with authentic customs, culture, and traditions irrespective of tourists’ faith and cultural values? What are the contemporary marketing strategies and practices to understand, target, and/or capture tourists from diverse backgrounds in a more effective manner? We selected 10 articles for this special issue that may help tourism marketing managers improve their strategies for winning a share of the culturally/religiously orientated tourists.