During the last decade, many places like restaurants, shopping malls, tourism and leisure environments, have evolved into a plurality of worlds to be discovered and into which one can live sensory experiences. The multiplication of themed places led us to ponder about the supplement of value they could offer to their customers. Given the engendered costs, a strategy based on thematization has to influence behaviors of consumers. From a theoretical point of view, research on thematization draws on the experiential stream of literature, which aims at reenchanting consumers. Research in consumption sociology explains disenchantment through rationalization of production and consumption activities, which has been a landmark of the modern period. Simulation and hyperreality, as pillars of postmodernity, ground strategies of thematization. Experiential marketing then aims at giving sense and magic back to consumption experiences, be they extraordinary or not. This research studies the effects of themed place on the experience lived by consumers. It draws on works that study environmental influence on consumer behavior. A model mixing cognitive (global perceived value, satisfaction) and affective (emotions, enchantment, consumption value) variables, which aims at explaining intention to come back, is proposed. Major ski resorts are the empirical field of application. A quantitative study has been conducted in both a themed (Arc 1950) and a non-themed (Arc 1800) resort. Mean differences t-tests and structural equation modeling (PLS approach) have been used to test the proposed model. Four main contributions emerge. The first one is conceptual as we contribute to a better understanding of the enchantment. Thematization and dramatizing are also confronted. The second is related to the influence of thematization. Results show that a themed environment brings more intense emotions and improves consumer's enchantment. Perceived global value of the experience and satisfaction are also higher in the themed resort. The third contribution lies into the study of structural relations between the variables in the model. First, a strong influence of enchantment on global perceived value and satisfaction is shown. It is also noticed that satisfaction better explains intention to come back than global value. Furthermore, our results indicate that consumption value has little effects on other variables. Last, the development of a measurement scale of ski resort experience consumption value is the main methodological contribution of this research.
