Experience Innovation for Small Food and Tourism Firms

This article focuses on experience innovation as a means to create value for small food and tourism firms in rural areas. Innovation is viewed as an essential part of experience staging. However, research on innovation in the experience economy literature constitutes an immature field of study that requires further investigation. The article seeks to address this gap by investigating how small food and tourism firms can enhance experience innovation.
The research approach is a qualitative experimental design. Methods for collecting empirical material consist of observations, semi-structured interviews, and documents. The main contribution is a three-phased model that can inspire small food and tourism firms to generate, select, and develop new ideas for experience innovation that are aligned with their capabilities, experience DNA, and available resources.