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

Abstract

In this chapter, we investigate experiences of air passengers in the airside setting of commercial airports. While 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 consumption in this context as well as factors influencing food and beverage outlet patronage intentions. Using a European non-hub commercial airport as practical unit, we applied a mixed methods single case study methodology to investigate food and beverage 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 for employees alike. Whilst airports have a certain uniformity to regular travellers, infrequent travellers 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 behaviours.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 analysed in this study. Food and beverage 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 behaviour to prevailing emotional states in their transgressions between work and home realm in the liminoid airside context.

Impact of diversity management on innovative work behavior: mediating role of human resource management and affective commitment

“…All measurement scales used to evaluate the key constructs were drawn from extant literature and aligned with the conceptual definition of each construct. DM was operationalized using an eleven-item measurement scale recommended by Ashikali and Groeneveld (2015) and Merkle et al (2020). To measure HR practices within firms, eleven items were adopted from Zaim et al (2007), which was initially proposed by Pfeffer (1998).…”