Ethnic Hospitality Marketing: Authenticity and Quality Constructions in the Greek Food Industry

Ethnic-themed restaurants are informal but powerful ambassadors for a country’s culture and contributors to local and national economies. Communicating authenticity and quality are essential characteristics in the development of a competitive and effective marketing strategy for restaurants. This book analyses how authenticity and quality perceptions are both constructed and communicated within the ethnic dining sector.

Drawing on qualitative research methods, the book explores examples from the Greek food industry to analyse restaurateurs’ and consumers’ constructed meanings of authenticity, and how it is transmitted and received. It follows by exploring the marketing implications of consumer constructs and effective promotional methods to aid restaurateurs to better engage with customers whilst also respecting their culinary culture. It also guides the reader through the use of NVivo for research purposes, and its utilisations to facilitate inductive and interpretive analyses.

This book offers a valuable resource for researchers across marketing, including consumer behaviour, food marketing, marketing research and communications. The data analysis tools explored are also transferable to a wide range of sectors outside of food and dining.

Dr. Elena Chatzopoulou has served as an associate professor of marketing and digital marketing at universities in the United Kingdom and France, and also as (visiting) professor of marketing at IÉSEG, School of Management. Before joining academia, she worked as a marketing manager.

Elena has supervised numerous theses of marketing students and has also provided consultancy services to companies with a focus on marketing, digital marketing and communication. She has taught in physical as well as in digital environments, at undergraduate and postgraduate levels. To name a few of her courses: digital consumer, e-business, branding, international marketing and integrated marketing communications, for which she received excellent student evaluations. During her academic tenure in the United Kingdom she was certified as a fellow of the Higher Education - UKPSF (D2).

During her career she has received the teaching excellence award from the Academy of Marketing, the best paper award at the IFIP e-Business, e-Services and e-Society conference. She has also been awarded as an outstanding reviewer and for outstanding contribution to reviewing articles for publication by the journal Computers in Human Behavior.