During-experience involvement and dining experience

Involvement has been viewed as a central tenet of experience. Nevertheless, the predominant types of involvement in the service and marketing literatures arguably fail to fully capture the involvement of customers throughout their experiences. As a result, this research proposes a new type of involvement, namely situated involvement to investigate how tourists’ interest in/motivation for a dining experience is enhanced in restaurants. The research also investigates whether such involvement impacts the dining experiences. The findings from 20 interviews in Queenstown, New Zealand reveal 13 themes related to factors contributing to situated involvement. Moreover, it appears that situated involvement plays a positive role in dining experiences of tourists.