Cross-border shopping and tourism destination marketing: the case of Southern Jutland, Denmark

ABSTRACT

This article addresses the economic impact that cross-border shopping has on the local tourism industry and the ways that cross-border shopping is taken advantage of in tourism destination marketing. Southern Jutland – situated in Denmark just north of the German border, where border shops situated just south of the same border enable Danes to capitalize on the lower value added tax levels in Germany – is utilized as an illustrative case example. The data were collected by analysing the relevant tourism destination marketing material and via interviews with local destination marketing organizations and tourism firms. Based on the empirical evidence it seems that the positive impact that cross-border shopping can have on attracting large numbers of tourists into the region can outweigh the negative impact of tourists preferring border shops to local products and services: cross-border shopping has become a tourist attraction in itself, which benefits the local economies on both sides of the border. However, this potential is not taken advantage of in tourism destination marketing. The article, thus, concludes with suggestions for the tourism industry to develop its image and brand by integrating cross-border shopping into tourism destination marketing strategies. The results have wider relevance for other border regions.

KEYWORDS:

• Attraction
• cross-border shopping
• destination branding
• destination marketing
• Danish–German border region
• tourism industry
• tourism marketing

Acknowledgements

I am grateful to Professors Susanne Bygvrå, Andreas P. Cornett and Allan Williams as well as to the editors and anonymous reviewers for their comments on improving the paper. I am also indebted to the interviewees for their time and effort and to Camilla Barslund and Mette S. Larsen (research assistants) for conducting, transliterating and translating the interviews.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

ORCID

Teemu Makkonen http://orcid.org/0000-0002-1065-1806

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by Fleggaard GmbH.