The tourist-pilgrim continuum in consumer behaviour: the case of international visitors to Kykkos Monastery, Cyprus

ABSTRACT

Monasteries nowadays attract numerous visitors whose trips reflect varying levels of religious motivation. They witness varying consumption patterns when it comes to visitors’ shopping behaviour on their premises. Thus, building on the model of the tourist-pilgrim continuum, the research utilized both quantitative and qualitative methods to comprehend the consumer behaviour patterns of 184 foreign individuals who visited Kykkos Monastery on the island of Cyprus. The research findings provide further understanding of the tourist-pilgrim continuum by observing, among others, secularism/religious consumerism, souvenir value and the volume and structure of the purchased products.

KEYWORDS:

• Tourism-pilgrim continuum
• shopping
• religious consumerism
• secularism
• Kykkos Monastery
• Cyprus

Acknowledgements

The research presented has been supported by the Network Dedicated to the History of the Monastic Economy, hosted by the Centre for Advanced Study Sofia and the Centre for Governance and Culture in Europe (GCE) at the School of Humanities and Social Sciences in the University of St. Gallen under the project ‘Does Monastic Economy Matter? Religious Patterns of Economic Behaviour’.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 Data supplied by Kykkos Monastery.

Additional information

Funding

The research presented has been supported by the Network Dedicated to the History of the Monastic Economy, hosted by the Centre for Advanced Study Sofia and the Centre for Governance and Culture in Europe (GCE) at the School of Humanities and Social Sciences in the University of St. Gallen under the project ‘Does Monastic Economy Matter? Religious Patterns of Economic Behaviour’.

Notes on contributors

Darko Dimitrovski

Darko Dimitrovski is an Associate Professor in the Faculty of Hotel Management and Tourism at the University in ragujevac, Serbia. He holds a PhD in Geography from the University of Belgrade. He has been involved in post-doctoral research fellowship at University Trás-os-Montes and Alto Douro (UTAD), Portugal. He has authored a number of articles in the leading peer-reviewed international journals (International Journal of Contemporary Hospitality Management, Cities, Tourism Management Perspectives, Tourism Geographies, Journal of Travel and Tourism Marketing, Leisure Studies, International Journal of Heritage Studies, Marketing Intelligence & Planning, Tourism Review, Journal of Hospitality and Tourism Technology, etc). His research interest is largely focused on special interest tourism. He was engaged as a researcher in several international tourism-related projects.

Dimitri Ioannides

Dimitri Ioannides, PhD is chaired professor of Human Geography at Mid-Sweden University. Prior to moving to Sweden he taught at Missouri State University in the US. His primary interests are in the economic geography of tourism and tourism planning and sustainable development. He edits the book series New Directions in Tourism Analysis (Routledge) and sits on the editorial boards of several journals including Tourism Geographies. He is also on the board of the International Polar Tourism Research Network. Currently, he is co-editing an edited collection on Peer-to-Peer accommodation and sustainable development.

Kyrillos Nikolaou

Kyrillos Nikolaou is a Lecturer at the European University, Nicosia Cyprus. He has completed his studies in History and Geopolitics in France and Management/Business Administration in UK and has his Doctorate from Sorbonne (Paris I). His research interests are: economic and social history 19th-20th centuries, history-geography and intercultural studies, geopolitics, migration, special interest tourism, pilgrimage tourism, heritage tourism. His publications include the following: Cyprus and Malta: A comparative geopolitical analysis of Euro-Mediterranean insularity. From the Non-Aligned Movement to the European Union. In: European Union. From the geopolitics of transition to the perspective of integration, Athens: Herodotus, 2010; The Social Dimensions of Public and Private Education in Cyprus, In: Public and Private Education, Proceedings of the 3rd Panhellenic Conference on Sociology of Education, Nicosia, European University of Cyprus, 2018; The intangible cultural heritage of Troodos mountain, Athens: Mesogeios, (forthcoming).