Title: Welcome to Paradise. Customer experience design and emotional labour on a cruise ship

Authors: Marjana Johansson, Lovisa Naslund

Addresses: Essex Business School, University of Essex, Wivenhoe Park, Colchester CO4 3SQ, UK. ' Department of Management and Organization, Stockholm School of Economics, P.O. Box 6501, 113 83 Stockholm, Sweden

Abstract: This paper describes the work on board a cruise ship. The purpose is to examine the emotional demands put on workers in the so-called experience industry. A field study was conducted to study how customer experience is created through the management of space, passengers, and emotions. It is argued that the sought-after paradisiac experience is attained by acts of sanitising, and that the perceived freedom of the passengers is mirrored by increased control on the part of the service providers, synthesising Hochschild|s notion of emotional labour with Ritzer|s sociology of consumption to attain an understanding of the organisation of experiences.

Keywords: experience economy; service work; emotional labour; customer experience; experience design; cruise ships; space management; passenger management; emotion management; sociology of consumption; services.

DOI: 10.1504/IJWOE.2009.025397

International Journal of Work Organisation and Emotion, 2009 Vol.3 No.1, pp.40 - 55

Published online: 21 May 2009 *

Full-text access for editors Full-text access for subscribers Purchase this article Comment on this article