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The invention of shopping tourism. The discursive repositioning of

landscape in an Italian retail-led case
Chiara Rabbiosia
a
Department of Social Research, University of Helsinki, Helsinki, Finland

Online publication date: 09 June 2011

To cite this Article Rabbiosi, Chiara(2011) 'The invention of shopping tourism. The discursive repositioning of landscape in
an Italian retail-led case', Journal of Tourism and Cultural Change, 9: 2, 70 — 86
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 Journal of Tourism and Cultural Change
Vol. 9, No. 2, June 2011, 70– 86

The invention of shopping tourism. The discursive repositioning of

landscape in an Italian retail-led case
Chiara Rabbiosi∗ †

Department of Social Research, University of Helsinki, Helsinki, Finland

(Received 23 May 2010; final version received 5 November 2010)

Under the label of ‘shopping tour’, tour operators currently offer package tours which aim
to highlight for the visitor the commercial appeal of a particular location. A variety of
destinations are suitable for tours with such a label. In this context, certain ‘shopping
tourism’ destinations simply consist of areas where the concentration of corporation-led
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retail venues is high. The Novese Area, in the northwest of Italy, has been transforming
into such a destination since the opening of the Serravalle Designer Outlet, an outlet
‘village’ which opened in 2000. This paper reports on original research aimed at
enquiring about shifts in the representation of the landscape of this area as it is shown in
the discourses of local political and business actors. It is argued that this case study
portrays a rather unique case of late western urban regeneration practice through which a
formal industrial area is turned into a consumption site suitable for tourism. Here, the
repositioning process not only influences local planning policies, but feeds – and is fed
by – a simultaneous process of consumption normalization.
Keywords: shopping tourism; local planning; retail; consumption; Italy

1. Introduction

Recently, offers of tour packages labelled as ‘shopping tours’ have increased signifi-
cantly in the tourism industry. From Dubai and its February shopping festival,1 to Paris
and the ‘Capital of Shopping’ events organized during sales season,2 shopping tour
locations include newly developed sites as well as heritage sites across every continent.
Milan is among the most quoted sites for shopping tourism with destination Italy. The city is
indeed one of the capitals of the fashion world, and the city-centre area known as the ‘fashion
quadrilateral’ is bordered by roads upon which national and international fashion designers have
their outlets. Still, when searching for ‘Milan’ and ‘shopping tour’ with the most common
Internet search engines, one of the most common destinations is not the city itself, but a
shopping mall situated approximately one hundred kilometres from the city: the Serravalle
Designer Outlet (SDO or Outlet Village), one of the biggest European factory outlet centres.
Opened in 2000, the SDO offers exclusive brands and high-quality commodities sold at
30– 70% below the usual retail price, inside a setting created to enhance the experience of

∗
Email:chiararabb@libero.it
†
Present address: URB & COM, Politecnico of Milan, DiAP Nave, Via Bonardi 9, 20133 Milano,
Italy.

ISSN 1476-6825 print/ISSN 1747-7654 online

# 2011 Taylor & Francis
DOI: 10.1080/14766825.2010.549233
http://www.informaworld.com
 Journal of Tourism and Cultural Change 71

consumption. A specific shopping mall format, factory outlet ‘villages’ like SDOs have
appeared since the late 1990s in Europe, with Italy representing one of the most vital
markets throughout the first decade of the twenty-first century (Falk, 2009). The presence
of such malls on the Old Continent can be interpreted as a further step in the process of the
‘malling’ of the landscape, the symbolic and material implications of which Gottdiener
(1986, 1995, 1997) analysed with reference to the themed landscape of America.
In this paper, the development of the SDO is used as a case study to demonstrate the
way in which a retail venue that has become the attraction site for shopping tourism rede-
fines uses, functions and images of the local area in which it is built. The aim of the paper is
twofold: firstly to account for the ‘image selection’ – the use of a selected sense of place to
communicate specific geographical localities or areas (Murray, 2001; Schöllman, Perkins,
& Moore, 2001; Ward & Gold, 1994) – involved in the promotion of the area within which
the SDO has been opened; and secondly to account for the course of action that the SDO
influences with regards to local policies and place promotion.
Earlier literature points to a changing institutional background with regard to the
common practice of ‘marketing’ urban contexts in order to foster local economies and to
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encourage public – private partnerships to achieve regeneration (Murray, 2001; Ward,

2000; Ward & Gold, 1994; Weiss-Sussex & Bianchini, 2006). The attempt to face issues
relating to the deprivation paths that lead to economic exclusion has become the main
focus of local planning policies in a wide range of areas, such as employment, accessibility
and recreation. The participation of actors such as those working in the retail and tourism
industries has, specifically with reference to the territorial policies related to these issues,
not only increased (Giaoutzi & Nijkamp, 2006; Kotler, Haider, & Rein, 1993), but also
assigned new roles (Guy, 1998; Stobart & Hallsworth, 1999; Thomas & Bromley, 2002).
Patterns of tourism are bound up with economic and social and spatial dynamics, the
first influencing the latter and vice versa (Dredge, 2001).
The SDO and its location represent a unique case, in which a retail-led redevelopment
drawn by a private multinational actor has fostered a total repositioning of images and dis-
courses related to the landscape of the area itself to make it suitable for tourism. Ten years
on, it is clear that this process is not yet concluded. Still, it can be analysed as a contribution
to a ‘regime of truth’, as Foucault would define it (Foucault, 2001; see also Dean, 1999),
through which consumption is accounted for in contemporary society as one of the most
prominent focuses of the post-industrial space and as a tool to suit major political economic
changes (Aoyama, 2009; Hall, 1987; Law, 1992; Lowe 2005; Paddison, 1993).

2. The landscapes of shopping and tourism

The link between consumption and tourism by means of the practice of shopping is histori-
cally close. In one of the first academic essays on this connection, Butler (1991) underlined
the relationship between the practice of shopping and the practice of tourism as having at
least two different further classifications. Tourism shopping refers to going shopping as a
side or secondary activity during a trip. However, in the case of shopping tourism, shopping
is the primary motivation for a trip, or the primary element in forging the touristic experi-
ence. In this second case, the appeal of the destination is strictly connected to the commod-
ities – their quality, their quantity, their convenience, etc. – that can be purchased on site
(Timothy, 2004).
Under the label of ‘shopping tour’, tour operators currently propose package tours
aimed not strictly at visiting a place for its cultural, natural or anthropological sights, but
for its commercial appeal. From a chronological point of view, waves of what is now
 72 C. Rabbiosi

called ‘shopping tourism’ have been connected to (a) the production sites of specific com-
modities (e.g. housewares or clothing factory outlets, areas known for their handcrafts,
etc.); or (b) locations where one can shop for a variety of commodities available in
larger quantities, of higher qualities or at lower prices in comparison with other sites
(e.g. cross-border shopping); or (c) places known to be centres of creativity and design
(e.g. urban fashion districts).
This paper focuses however on a fourth category of destination, consisting of shopping
tourism locations forged on an ad hoc basis by virtue of a high local concentration of cor-
poration-led retail venues. Such locations enable waves of tourism flows3 with their desti-
nations being shopping malls or other large-scale retail venues (Jackson, 1991; Lamy,
2009). In such cases,4 outlet venues must be intended as proper consumption spaces, the
success or failure of which can have a direct effect on the surrounding locality.
Zukin (2004) has recently called the symbolic landscapes involved with shopping (and
consumption in general) ‘landscapes of power’ (p. 28). These are new political arenas in
which a variety of actors mobilize their capital (economic, cultural and social) in order
to maximize their profit (not necessarily expressed in economic terms). Public policy-
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makers, tourism planners, local entrepreneurs, real-estate developers, retail corporations,

residents, shoppers, tourists, workers and mere casual foot traffic – are all actors involved
with the landscape associated with shopping tourism. Their practices and representations
are embedded in (and contribute to) the process of normalization of shopping as a ‘cultural’
resource (see also Zukin & Smith Maguire, 2004). The primary structures of this process,
superstores, hypermarkets, retail warehouses, retail parks and factory outlet malls, are the
resulting built forms brought about by the growth of the off-centre retailing and the
urban sprawl (Gruen & Smith, 1960; Guy, 1998).
The phenomenon of the ‘malling’ of contemporary landscapes is not a novelty. Gottdi-
ener (1995) has explained the archetypical role of the mall in ‘signifying’ socio-spatial
transformations which occurred first in the USA in the 1950s. Malls are the devices for
the conversion of production to consumption and the realization of capital within the
context of the dispersion of population and activities. Within Gottdiener’s socio-semiotic
framework of analyses, malls are understood as the articulation of material form and
modes of representation. The mall ‘embodies particular design artefacts which are instru-
mentally designed to promote purchasing’ but it is also ‘the physical space within which
individuals come to participate in a certain type of urban ambiance which they crave’
(Gottdiener, 1995, p. 84). Malls could not exist without consumer culture, but at the
same time they are the essential, even if residual, public sphere in late capitalism societies.
Among malls, high-end factory outlet centres (also called designer outlet centres or vil-
lages) are unique and their development matches remarkably well with the characteristics
outlined by Gottdiener. Their original design derives from factory shops; retail venues
located next to production sites which allowed the producer to sell off excess inventory,
imperfect goods and damaged products in an effort to clear floor space close to the
factory site itself, space that was needed for production. This allowed the shopper to pur-
chase goods at a lower retail price (Falk, 2009; Fernie, 1995; Timothy, 2004). Since the out-
sourcing of production to countries where production costs less than in Western countries,
the format of factory shops has changed significantly. Firstly, the initial tendency was to
combine stores that offered a single high-quality or exclusive brand manufacturer’s own
products at reduced prices (‘outlets’ in the strictest sense) with stores selling discounted
merchandise from a wider variety of manufacturers (‘off-price’ retailers). Secondly, while
outlet centres had traditionally been ‘no-frills’ operations where people went to find bargains,
they began to offer recreational opportunities in a well-maintained and controlled open-air
 Journal of Tourism and Cultural Change 73

environment. Certain factory outlet centres developed natural or nostalgic themes during the
1980s, along the lines of popular themed leisure parks. Open-air settings served to create a
‘village’ feel to differentiate the shopping experience from that had in a common mall.
Thirdly, the centres began to be managed by specialized companies charged with the admin-
istration of the single units within the centre. As a result, one-time manufacturers became
tenants of the factory outlet ‘village’, owned and developed by a real-estate corporation.
Skilled marketing managers now co-ordinated the development of communication strategies
which aimed to promote such a mall as an attraction in itself, one which could be marketed as
a tourist destination. In order for developers to make a return on their investments, these kinds
of shopping malls had to keep to principles of localization very similar to those which dictate
the building of super-regional shopping centres.5 Both are located at the edge of small towns
or in the middle of rural areas so as not to compete with city-centre shopping. A catchment
area based on an isochrone of at least 90 min would be considered, ensuring that the area lies
just outside a main artery or highway. In order to maximize the aggregate spending power
of the catchment area, the mall would be established in a region that has both an average
to high-income level and a massive flow of tourists.
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In this construct, factory outlet centres abandoned their close connections to the fac-
tories, and became an important part of both the retail and tourism landscapes in North
America. By the end of the 1990s, these same changes came to Europe, at much the
same time as the first references began to appear in academic literature (Conroy, 1998;
Guy, 1998), and the first sources began to target them as tourist attractions. ‘High-end’
factory outlet malls and villages started to be listed as resources to be included in destination
branding strategies. This is in accordance with tourism marketing practices which see
places being branded in much the same way as consumer goods and services (Caldwell
& Freire, 2004; Kotler et al., 1993; Morgan & Pritchard, 2000). They had moved a
further step in the process of theming the landscape of late capitalism environments,
acquiring a special power in the selection of the images suitable to connote specific areas.

3. Case study: the SDO in Italy

3.1 Setting and methodology
In Italy, the first factory outlet centre opened in September 2000 in a newly built open-air
setting that would eventually herald the first Italian designer outlet village (Figure 1). The
setting recalls the style of a sixteenth-century town typical of the area between Piedmont
and Liguria in the northwest of Italy. Its advertising slogan is in itself a kind of mission
statement; ‘Lusso senza rinunce’,6 used by the managing corporation for its other factory
outlet malls in Italy. As a matter of fact, the retail area promotes itself as offering exclusive
and high-quality branded commodities at 30– 70% below retail price. One of the biggest
European factory outlet malls, the SDO has enjoyed enormous success, measured by its
retail performance and in terms of its success as a cultural phenomenon. Following the
launch of the SDO, many other factory outlet ‘villages’ opened in Italy; by the end of
2010 there will be 21,7 mostly concentrated in the North. A few retail development projects
are planned to extend the format into the South in 2010 – 2012.
Mainstream tourism and travel magazines increasingly portray these places as attractive
destinations. An article entitled ‘Saturday in the Village: A Tour in the 10 Best Shopping
Centres in Italy’ appeared in national mainstream tourism magazine Gente Viaggi
(October 2007), and echoed the title of a famous Italian poem by Giacomo Leopardi,
Il sabato del villaggio, written in 1829 (‘Saturday Evening in the Village’).8 All the
 74 C. Rabbiosi
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Figure 1. ‘Shopping tourists’ on the main square of the SDO.

shopping venues mentioned in the article were outlet villages. They were presented with a
short description of commercial characteristics (maximum sales, opening hours, prestigious
brands), followed by suggested hotels and restaurants, as well as local culinary specialities,
under the heading ‘Not to miss’. I Viaggi di Repubblica (November 2008), a main news-
paper tourism supplement, offers a similar review of ‘the shops that look like villages,
where shopping means having fun’.
The case of the SDO is unique. In the following paragraphs, the Novese area, where the
SDO is located will be described and the history of the localization of this specific shopping
mall will be retraced. Commerce does not represent a completely new economic engine
here; on the contrary, it is a legacy of development of the area since the time previous to
the industrial revolution, the effects of which ultimately forged a sense of place over the
nineteenth and twentieth century. It is just in the past two decades that the area is
coming to terms with the process of urban regeneration. A late case in comparison with
other western European contexts, the Novese area is changing rapidly from an industrial
area in decay to a chic destination for shopping tourism. Indeed, the success of the localiz-
ation of the SDO influenced the repositioning of the representations associated with the area
itself and the same conceptualization of local development policies. This is shown in the
discourses of key local actors who have come face-to-face with the changes brought
about by the outlet village and who have had to account for them in public when they
are called to ‘make claims about the nature of places, often implying, inferring or hypothe-
sizing a reputed, or putative, sense of place’ (Schöllmann et al., 2001, p. 309).
In addition to primary interviews with the mayor of Serravalle Scrivia and with the SDO
marketing office, recorded between 2007 and 2009,9 the content of local actors’ public
statements given during a workshop held in the area on 23 April 2008 will be analysed
in the central part of this paper (Distretto del Novese (DdN), 2008). The meeting, promoted
 Journal of Tourism and Cultural Change 75

by the regional administrator in partnership with local business representatives, brought

together a group of local public and private actors. It also marked the public recognition
of the DdN (see §4), the administrative institution in charge of integrating national policies
with local policies. In this specific case, this regulatory body was put in place after the
regeneration process of the area had already begun and was given a particular identity
because of the localization of the SDO. The workshop can be considered to be a seminal
stage in which different actors officially voiced a common interest in the future of the
area and its shopping-related branding particular to the local area. It can also be regarded
as the first official result of a long process through which all the actors redefined their
roles in the process of managing the area and in the making up of a new – not yet accom-
plished – landscape suitable for shopping tourism.

3.2 The Novese area before and after the SDO

Also called the ‘Scrivia Valley’ after the river flowing through it, the area is more
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commonly known as the ‘Novese’, after the main town, Novi Ligure. The area has been
characterized by a strong vocation towards the development of industrial activity ever
since the nineteenth century. During the 1800s, the area was known for its kilns, cotton
and silk mills and paper mills; in the 1920s the first confectionary factories were established
here, followed by food-related chemistry industries; these were initially part of the indus-
trial production of the area and later constituted a distinguished industrial district of excel-
lence. The iron and steel industry was massively reinforced after World War II with the
enlargement of some factories already in place, such as Delta, located in the Serravalle
Scrivia itself, or Riva, in Novi Ligure. The latter was then converted into Italsider, one
of the biggest state-owned iron and steel factories. Reaching an economical and represen-
tational peak between the 1950s and the 1970s, Italsider became a full-blown, nationally
recognized landmark, a symbol for the area.
Already by the 1860s, 35% of the population worked in the industrial sector, compared
with 50% in the agricultural sector. The quota of employed in the industrial sector increased
to 45% in 1911 and 60% in 1936. Between the 1950s and the 1970s, the percentage of
people working in the secondary sector increased to around 55%, while the primary
sector decreased and the tertiary increased. The 1980s marked the beginning of the end
of this cycle with the oil and steel crises, as well as the state withdrawal from the control
of production. Even though in 2001, the percentage of those employed in the industry
was still 39%, the percentage of those employed in the tertiary sector had increased to
58%. Once privatized after the dissolution of the IRI (the Italian Institute for Industrial
Reconstruction) at the end of the 1990s, Italsider (now renamed Ilva) continued to
produce with just one tenth of the workers, than it employed in the 1970s, while other fac-
tories outsourced production or closed down.10
The municipality of Novi Ligure, always considered the urban core of the area, today
has fewer than 30,000 inhabitants, while the municipality of Serravalle Scrivia, the second-
largest urban centre of the area, has only 6000 inhabitants. The other villages in the area lie
along the coast near the Scrivia Valley and are very small. As a matter of fact, the ‘tra-
ditional’ male occupational profile of the area was typified, up until the end of the
1980s, by the metalmezzadro, a term that is a pun on the Italian words for ‘metalworker’
(metalmeccanico) and ‘sharecropper’ (mezzadro). This label is indicative of the history
of the area, for the process of abandoning rural spaces began in Italy with the creation of
industry, and was still occurring when the process of de-industrialization began. The
 76 C. Rabbiosi

traces of the process of abandoning rural spaces were still visible on the landscape at the
end of the twentieth century.
It was not until the 1990s that massive projects for regeneration planning began, most of
which did not concern factory settlements, which were still being abandoned at this point,
but rather, the obsolete areas formerly used by the primary sector activities. In the Novese
area, new space for tertiary sector activities became available, specifically concerning the
localization of the retail industry. Bordering the municipality of Novi Ligure was a
disused farm building surrounded by land – the Ca’ Praga Sturla – which was pinpointed
for a retail development project in the northern area of the municipality of Serravalle
Scrivia. In 1993, a local limited company was founded, Praga s.r.l., in order to submit a pro-
posal for a change in the town planning in the municipality of Serravalle Scrivia (Brunetta
& Salone, 2002). The aim was to enable the normative conditions needed to create a multi-
purpose compound that would offer handcrafts, cultural, sport, tourism, and recreational
activities. Europe Invest, a Belgian development company based in Florence specialized
in trading and leisure facilities such as outlet malls or retail and leisure parks, acted as a
broker and helped Praga s.r.l. in coming to an agreement with McArthur Glen, a developer,
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owner and manager of the designer outlet villages in Europe based in the UK. Founded in
1993 as a joint venture between an American promoter and the British company British
Airport Authority, McArthur Glen has grown as the European leader in the high-end
factory outlet centres sector since then. Today the company manages 19 centres and was
ranked first according to the proportion of total factory outlet centres’ sale space in
Europe in 2009 (Clifford Chance, 2009). McArthur Glen’s strength derives from its partner-
ship strategy with financial actors; from a portfolio of international fashion brands that will
sell in the centres that the company manages; and from its ability in retail marketing and
entertainment. Not last, one of the most significant abilities of McArthur Glen is that of
being able to smooth potential conflicts with local partners by co-operating with them
(see also Willems, 2009, pp. 60, 66).
A general strategic opening of this kind turned to be very important in the realization
of the SDO and was demanded of all the actors involved at different scales and with
different roles. The first phase was planning and mediation across different political con-
texts. A preliminary contractual negotiation was held with the Serravalle Scrivia city
council in order to reach a partnership. A second meeting was promoted by the county,
the Provincia di Alessandria, to co-ordinate between the institutions. The other municipa-
lities in the area and the representatives of the retail associations gathered and were asked
for their opinions, even if they could not create a binding agreement. During these con-
sultations, both Confesercenti – a retailers association – and the municipalities of Novi
Ligure and Gavi, expressed a negative judgment. Ascom, a syndicate union for retailers,
took a neutral position (Brunetta & Salone, 2002). Thanks to the mediation of the mayor
of Serravalle Scrivia, a long-established local politician who managed to build an inde-
pendent career and take a leading role in the Novese area, the Municipality of Serravalle,
Praga s.r.l. and McArthur Glen Serravalle plc. entered an agreement in the spring of 1999,
and by August the site was ready for the commencement of the first stages of construction
of the outlet village.
Throughout the entire process, the municipality of Serravalle earned approximately 2
billion-Italian-lira (approximately E1,033,000) from the building permit at the end of the
second phase of enlargement of Serravalle Scrivia Designer Outlet, and 1.2 billion (approxi-
mately E620,000) from corporate taxes (20 million, or approximately E10,330 for each
boutique in the mall) (Brunetta & Salone, 2002). In its first year in 2000, the outlet
village paid out 160 million-Italian-lira (approximately E82,630) in local council property
 Journal of Tourism and Cultural Change 77

taxes, constituting the largest part of the municipality total incomes from taxes, as declared
by the Mayor of Serravalle Scrivia in a personal interview.
Launched on 7 September 2000, with a potential catchment area of 4.6 million
visitors in a 60 min drive radius or 12.6 million in a 90 min drive radius, the Outlet
Village has now been visited by more than 20 million people, with an average of
3 million visitors per year and as many as 100,000 visitors on weekends. The number
of shops at the village has increased from 63 to 180, as has the size of retail space
from 10,000 m2 to 40,000 m2, through four different enlargement phases, all in less
than 10 years. In the words of McArthur Glen, ‘Today SDO is the largest in Europe,
and Italy’s leading shopping mall. The reaching of 20 million visitors underlines not
only the Outlet’s commercial success, but also its appeal for tourists and its role as a
development engine for the region’.11
The direct consequences of the establishment of such a shopping mall had an immediate
impact on the local area. Road traffic across the whole area increased, and road congestion
grew dramatically in spite of the enlargement of the Serravalle motorway exit and the
construction of the enlargement of the junction between Serravalle and Novi Ligure.
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Land and real estate property values increased drastically, specifically in the area affected
by the land rezoning for commercial use following the change of the town plan. Another
direct implication was the employment structure, as the SDO absorbed some of the
former factory workforce, with a greater level of re-employment for women than for men.
Further indirect consequences have been felt in terms of the local social and cultural
structure associated with retail, which was already suffering from a deprivation cycle influ-
enced by the decentralization of important shops from traditional city settings since the
beginning of the 1980s. The Outlet Village brought with it a new consumer model for
public space, influencing the establishment of a new ‘city effect’ (Brunetta & Salone,
2002, p. 68). It displaces the urban heart of the Novese area from the city centre of Novi
Ligure to the SDO plaza and surrounds, where other department stores have since
sprung up, becoming a new important gathering and consumption centre.
The commercial and social shift brought about by the localization of the Outlet Village
began to influence the expectations of local policy-makers and private actors to improve the
economic situation of the Novese Area. ‘The retailing power of the mall is almost irresis-
tible’ (Gottdiener, 1995, p. 83) not only to individual consumers, but for collective actors as
well. Western de-industrialization and the political shift towards entrepreneurialism
(Harvey, 1989) have pushed local administrative units to look at economic resources
coming from sectors that they had not previously considered to be of interest or within
their realm of experience (Vicari Haddock, 2004). ‘Marketing the place’ (Kotler et al.,
1993) is one of the most discussed practices used as a proactive and/or reactive strategy
to harness regions’ and cities’ economic opportunities (Bianchini & Ghilardi, 2007;
Murray, 2001; Paddison, 1993). Mid-size and small towns need to consider exogenous
resources to bring in capital to enhance the local economy, which has proved even more
challenging in towns than in cities, where suitable infrastructure for a service economy
can be more easily implemented. During a public meeting held in 2008 to acknowledge
the birth of the ‘Commercial District’ of the Novese Area (to which I will return later),
the mayor of Novi Ligure summarized the changes that had occurred as follows:

The [Novese] area developed only and exclusively because of industry from 1945 to the present
day. [. . .]. This was the traditional model. In the middle of the 1990s, we dealt with the problem,
we tried to make a virtue out of necessity; here, industry was no longer producing the same
results, so we had to look for alternatives. (DdN, 2008. Emphasis added)
 78 C. Rabbiosi

In the Novese area, the opportunity to revitalize the local economy in decay was unexpect-
edly coming from retail business at the end of the 1990s.

4. From factories to commercial gentrification

4.1 McArthur Glen takes the first steps
As Paddison (1993) pointed out, the marketing of a locality is not just a technique for pro-
moting a place; it is also a question of rebuilding and re-editing its image. For example,
some of the important factories in the Novese area have reduced their size or shut down,
yet the industrial district connected with confectionary still exists. Despite this, the rebrand-
ing of the area involved the abandonment of ‘factories’ as landmarks and the adoption of the
Outlet Village in the attempt to defining and claiming a new coherence in this ‘specific
envelope of space-time’ (Massey, 1995, p. 188). As we have seen, the Novese area is com-
pletely changing once again, turning the place identity from industrial to consumption. The
operation of ‘image rebuilding’ – which is not considered here strictly as the production of
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iconographic materials, but as a representation of the place offered through a variety of

media which eventually ‘materialize’ on landscape (see Schein, 1997) – has involved
both the managers of the Outlet and the local public and private managers. They have
not always worked together, but have moved closer over time.
Since its launch, the Outlet itself has considered the local context to be a resource,
though the public recreation events that it promoted have been characterized by a unilateral
way of thinking about the local area in the first 5 years since its opening. One example is the
financing of information posters in the nearby archaeological site of Libarna, which dates
back to the Roman origins of Serravalle Scrivia (thus proving the connection of this area
with commerce stretching back to ancient times thanks to its location at the crossroads
of major thoroughfares). The site, which is in excellent condition, is however difficult to
visit because the opening hours, which depend on availability of one employee of the
Ministry of Cultural Heritage and Activities, are limited. By way of correcting this, the
Outlet Village published a booklet that can be downloaded from the ‘Tourism’ page on
the SDO website. Later, they provided informative displays along the edges of the archae-
ological site so that visitors could enjoy a guide of the ruins even outside the opening hours.
This operation was not followed up by any further partnership, nor did it bring McArthur
Glen and the local tourism planners closer to a more co-ordinated promotional strategy.
McArthur Glen has also proposed events of great interest which utilize marketing strat-
egies that focus on the importance of ‘retail-entertainment’ events. Such strategies are
designed to enhance visitor numbers and draw potential customers, but they also create a
more grounded image of the place itself. An example of such an event is an international
jazz festival held each August; organized and promoted by McArthur Glen. Outlet in
Jazz brings internationally acclaimed musicians, as well as famous mainstream and
young ‘indie’ Italian artists directly to the SDO’s esplanade.
In the case of the SDO, McArthur Glen has described the mall tourism and leisure
policies as a way of working towards a ‘packaging synergy’ in conjunction with the area
surrounding the mall. Through these strategies, SDO ‘can benefit from this lovely landscape
and the local area can benefit from our visitors and our communication skills [to be known
outside the local scale]’ (McArthur Glen employee, the SDO marketing office). Even if
these strategies are part of a ‘nearly affective reason’ according to the same employee,
the territory is here used as part of a rhetoric that suits the McArthur Glen marketing
strategy. As a matter of fact, the same McArthur Glen employee continues:
 Journal of Tourism and Cultural Change 79

It can seem like nonsense, but it’s nearly . . . I can’t really say a way of protecting relationships,
because this is not the aim, but definitely there’s a will to enhance a positive attitude in the area
where we have landed (. . .) We are in Serravalle Scrivia, and we are a British company, but we
do not want to be perceived as an interloper or as a colonizer. We want to establish a good,
neighbourly relationship with the area, and our attitude is to be positive and transparent.

Although they can also provide new spaces for entrepreneurship at the local level, thanks
to the perception of the area as being suitable for promoting tourism and service activities
more generally, the regional marketing strategies of multinational retail corporations have
much more to do with limiting the conflict with the local retailers and commercial forces.
On the other hand, the need to confront the pressures that the area was facing and to
open the area up to the new facilities demanded by Outlet visitors, meant that local
actors began to turn directly or indirectly to the Outlet Village. This shift meant becoming
partners in leisure events promoted by McArthur Glen, and borrowing the company
marketing techniques. As the president of Ascom (the Novi Ligure syndicate union for
retailers) said,
The aim is to create an events circuit around activities that could bring people here from abroad,
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events that would lend something to the idea and to the reality that the area is, above all, active –
a dynamic area, an area that must become fashionable. (DdN, 2008. Emphasis added)

4.2 Local actors learn the lesson

The previous statement dates from the end of April 2008, just a few days before the launch
of the first ‘Novi Shopping Festival’, an event that sells itself as ‘a meeting between fashion
and shopping in the Town of Commerce’ (Novi Shopping festival leaflet). The festival
focuses on the distribution of a loyalty card – the Novicard Top Class – which people
can use while shopping in Novi Ligure boutiques, with rewards obtained through a
points system.
A second option, branded ‘Shopping Days’ (Figure 2), is promoted in partnership by the
SDO and a local consortium (Il cuore di Novi – The Heart of Novi) bringing together local
retail, trade services and tourism entrepreneurs. This offers further price reductions on

Figure 2. ‘Shopping Days’ brochure. # Il Cuore di Novi.

 80 C. Rabbiosi

merchandise in the Outlet Village and in shops in Novi Ligure, Serravalle Scrivia and Gavi,
another small city in the area, to visitors who spend at least one night in certain local hotels,
B&Bs or agriturismi.
Such shopping itineraries also include local tourism resources beyond retail, reinforcing
place promotion. Tourist attractions include large-scale and niche consumer events
designed to meet a variety of social targets who have to be persuaded of the place’s
worth according to their different tastes (Schöllman et al., 2001). This is the case for
sport-oriented attractions, which range from a variety of cycling events traditionally
popular in the area (the birthplace of many national cycling champions) to high-end golf
clubs (there are three 18-hole courses, a short drive from the Outlet Village). The appeal
of local food and wine is of course brought into the mix, in keeping with an international
tourism strategy (Boniface, 2003). The popularity of Italian culinary culture and tradition
adds value to this general trend, and results in an easy rhetoric. An annual Chocolate
Fair is organized by McArthur Glen in partnership with the municipality of Serravalle
Scrivia and the local and national gastronomy associations. The event is a showcase for
chocolate-making, a craft that is traditional across the entire Piedmont region. Local
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producers display alongside large-scale producers whose manufacturing was originally

founded in the area (such as Pernigotti, Novi or La Suissa).
Branding strategies have also been applied to enhance the already existing events and
fairs that might then be included in marketing of the place as a whole (Bianchini & Ghilardi,
2007; Caldwell & Freire, 2004). A label has been developed for ease of identification,
and to create a recognizable brand, as with the logo for the ‘Valli del Gusto’ (Valleys of
Flavour) to rebrand the Borbera and Spinti side valleys and promote a gourmet tour. The
same was true for ‘Dolci Terre’ (Sweet Lands), used to re-brand a local food fair running
since 1995.
These attractions are enjoyed most by weekend visitors or day-trippers, yet neither the
number of visitors, nor the economic benefit they bring, can be measured easily. However,
the number of incoming tourists spending at least one night in the area has measurably
increased since the Outlet Village opened, as has the subsequent tourism-driven local regen-
eration. Comparing 2007 figures with 2000 figures, visitor numbers increased by 10%,
while the number of overnights increased by 4% according to the Mayor of Novi Ligure
(DdN, 2008).

5. Shifts in political agenda and discursive representations

In spite of the rapid reorientation of the Novese area’s local economy following the arrival
of the the SDO in 2000, normative frames within town planning have been practically
absent until very recently. The evidently complex and interdependent relationship
between retail, tourism and the societal context means that policies in one arena are able
to influence and inform a number of other arenas, imposing their ‘truth’ with the transform-
ations being almost imperceptible. It is with this ‘soft touch’ that a complete new planning
structure was introduced at a regional level only at the end of 2006, when Piedmontese
administrators acknowledged directives from a 1998 national reform on the liberalization
of a number of commercial activities with the aim of better enforcing legislation on
competition and improving consumer protection (the so-called ‘Bersani laws’ after the
name of the then minister who proposed them). The reform incentivizes instruments to
promote co-operation among a variety of actors with the aim of stimulating and planning
local development. In 2006, Piedmont saw the institution of commercial districts,
pinpointing the Novese area for one of the pilot projects.
 Journal of Tourism and Cultural Change 81

The commercial district in question includes Novi Ligure as its core municipality, along
with another ten municipalities.12 It required administrative political action, which arose
from a need to improve local governance. Specifically, in Novese, this action should
help to prevent the exclusion of local economic circuits from the regeneration path
brought by the significant presence of retail entities based on mass-market delivery
systems. The District represents an ongoing negotiation between local public actors, includ-
ing the region itself, the municipalities, the county Chamber of Commerce and private
actors such as the retailers associations, Ascom and Confesercenti. The committee makes
decisions on town planning to do with viability and mobility, urban regeneration and
employment improvement. Moreover, the District produces an informative quarterly
magazine, a web platform,13 and some local events to engage the local residents.
On the whole, the location of the SDO and other department stores provoked a paradox-
ical reaction in the local retail landscape. As in other cases (Clarke et al., 2006), on one
hand, it strengthened a polarization between areas with no retail services at all and areas
with an overabundance of retail services. On the other hand, it has fed a general will to
invest in service activities linked with commerce and tourism. The District’s decision to
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focus on retail in terms of regional promotion seems to outline a path towards a compro-
mise, if not an agreement, among different kinds of interest groups. The councillor for
Development and Economics in the county, Provincia di Alessandria, sums it up as follows:

The considerable opportunity [provided by the establishment of major retail structures] has
become the grounds for planning a positive relationship between large-scale distributors,
retail networks and local retailers. The municipality of Novi has been able to create connections
with the local area. It has focused attention on the opportunity to qualify urban retail as a quality
sector that is part of our whole experience of handcraft, with excellent craftsmen and artisans.
[The municipality of Novi] can play this hand when it comes to promoting tourism. This is not
vague regional promotion that may or may not create tourism in the area; but the promotion of
an area that is connected to its traditions. These traditions are expressed in the local material
culture, and they are the visible indications that traditions should and must have an important
role in local planning. (DdN, 2008)

The way in which ‘traditions’ are only vaguely defined and are formulated so as to relate to
certain aspects of place meanings pushes forward representations that can be regarded as
enacting relationships of power-knowledge in the Foucaultian sense. Tourism, tradition
and retail became an indivisible ‘whole’ used rhetorically to suit shifting political
agendas and prominent elements of current government policy. The same positioning
and rhetoric are adopted by those local actors who were at first sceptical. For instance,
during the same public meeting about the Commercial District, the president of the syndi-
cate union for retailers Ascom, said:

The area is a shared patrimony. It is of common interest to big and small structures, and it is the
common good that we must preserve and defend. Above all we must value it [because] the
people who decide to come here from Milan to visit the Serravalle Designer Outlet could
equally decide to go to visit Parma,14 for instance. Then we must work out how the territory
can give added value to the Outlet Village and in so doing, create another reason for a visit
to the area. Surely all of us can benefit from our land. (DdN, 2008)

Once again, adding value to the region, is a generic reference to ‘the value’ of tradition,
which is presented as a commodity in a retail system. This is a reflection of the strong influ-
ence of place marketing, through which ‘places are, indeed, products whose identities and
values must be designed and marketed’ (Kotler et al., 1993, p. 10):
 82 C. Rabbiosi

We have to offer what these new customers ask for. We have done so. We believe that a devel-
opment project in which traditional commerce comes together with the area must stem from the
will to rediscover the value of traditions, the ancient art of our cooking, the wisdom of our
craftsmen, and a warm welcome.
All of this becomes an added value, a symbolic aspect that brings advantages to everyone,
and to all kinds of business. (DdN, 2008. Emphasis added)

The discursive repositioning is evidence of the will to market the area around these themes
and to adopt the logic of place marketing either as a magical tool or as the only successful
one in a climate of increasing competition between places. Kotler et al.’s (1993) warning
that ‘Every community has to transform itself into a seller of goods and services, a proactive
marketer of its product and its place value. . . . [Or they] face the risk of economic stagnation
and decline’ (p. 10) is directly in line with local interest groups’ claims about the future of
the Novese Area. The same perspective is once again mirrored by the words of the Mayor of
Novi Ligure, according to whom ‘we should imagine the District as a big retail area occu-
pied by many operators each displaying their own goods’ (DdN, 2008. Emphasis added).
Indeed, the travel magazine published by the District in Italian and in English, Otto
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Week End nelle Dolci Terre (Eight Weekends in the Sweet Lands), lists local and traditional
events as well as those that take place in the Outlet Village itself, whether organized in part-
nership with local organizations or solely by McArthur Glen. The SDO has been used by
local actors, including the very actors who feared its competition, such as the local trade
unions that are learning to copy its marketing techniques and language.
It is perhaps too early to fully evaluate the effects of this local regeneration process, as it
will only be possible to verify the results of contemporary place-marketing strategies in the
long term. However, what is clear is that the localization of a retail venue such as the SDO
brought not only major changes in the urban structure and planning policy, but a general
spread of consumer culture, even in those contexts were it was alien.

6. Conclusions
In the Novese area today, many different players are involved in town planning to improve
the suitability of the landscape for shopping tourism. First of all, this corresponds to a chan-
ging attitude towards land and its potential resources which focuses on turning territory into
a site for many kinds of shopping. Until now, shopping as an impetus for tourism has been
understood mainly as a destination branding principle at the city level (Evans, 2003; Han-
nigan, 2003), but here it has been examined in the context of deprived suburban and rural
areas. The retail industry, a leading sector in the service economy, plays a major role in
influencing discourses that propose (or justify) leisure shopping as a tourism motivation
and a distinct practice. Local government practice parallels forms of governance led by
retail developers. Leisure shopping is used to stitch together tourism, culture and tradition,
thus boosting local economy. The specific branding of the area, which followed the opening
of SDO as a leisure shopping destination suitable also for the tourism industry, responded to
the need of selecting a distinctive ‘sense of place’ to be used in regional competition
(Dredge, 2001; Schöllman et al., 2001).
Indeed, understanding the effects of retail-induced spatial reorganization is a major
issue for social research that can be approached from a variety of perspectives. Far for repre-
senting a complete study, the case of the Novese area and SDO raises more questions than it
answers. The actions of the government in general, and land government more specifically,
today tend to resemble a complex multi-player game. Public – private partnerships are
 Journal of Tourism and Cultural Change 83

commonplace, and the spread of horizontal political conditions have brought about new
policies in many fields, most notably in planning. Still, what new dependencies will the
development of such local government partnership bring about? Looking at the case in
question, will an instrument such as the ‘Commercial District’ really be able to handle
issues of retail exclusion or the unequal spatial redistribution that retail competition often
brings? The risk is that major, profit-oriented, private actors will clash with the redistribu-
tive aims of the District, or even that private actors will be allowed to run riot with new
development, especially in those contexts – such as the Italian one – where planning
has always been a delicate issue (Costa & Toniolo, 1993; Davico, Debernardi, Mela, &
Preto, 2002). With increasing regional competition in areas where shopping tourism brand-
ing is a recent tool, will those areas incapable of becoming a commodity become excluded?
The role of the developers is central to the phenomenon of shopping tourism, as they
are the primary middlemen between chains of production, distribution and consumption.
Their role, as well as their business practice, depends on organizational and technological
restructuring at the level of service delivery, distribution channels and consumer patterns.
But it also depends on planning restructuring and the development of new institutional
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frameworks through which tourism and retail capital can penetrate the spatial dimension,
manipulating and activating it.
The changing landscapes of power and/or consumption are thus embedded in both
economic and cultural problems. A completely renewed framework gives meaning to
practices of space production and place consumption which are intrinsically embedded in
wider global changes, local history, national politics and cultural trends.
Elusive though it may be, a ‘flow of power’ is at work that reinforces consumer culture,
and it can be seen in individuals and the collective alike, in both material and symbolic
ways – exactly as Gottdiener (1986, 1995, 1997) had outlined in his analysis of ‘the
mall’ and the US landscape. However, in the case presented, the condition portrayed by
Gottdiener is not expressed by the SDO alone. The whole area expresses it. It is specifically
under this larger framework that the relationship between shopping and tourism takes on a
deeper meaning.
Tourism is a major industry, and equally, a major cultural activity. It further represents
an interface between the micro- and macro-structures of society. In this sense, the SDO must
be considered as a shopping tourism destination for at least two reasons. Firstly because the
Outlet Village itself, marketed as a tourist destination, becomes a device for producing a
landscape suitable for tourism on a larger scale. Secondly, because it engages visitors
who, by coming to Italy for a taste of a ‘high-end leisure shopping activity’, engage in
complex relationships between the ordinary and the unusual, recreation and the re-creation
of space, place and belonging, which are at the core of tourism practice (Stock, 2003).
While this paper expands upon the first aspect, the second remains a major area of
enquiry which I have explored elsewhere (Rabbiosi, 2009). Combining the two perspec-
tives will help not only to give a more rounded account of shopping tourism landscapes,
but will also aid in the deeper understanding of the hegemonic frames of tourism as practice,
policy and representation.

Acknowledgements
I would like to thank the anonymous reviewers for their precious comments and helpful suggestions. I
am grateful to Nora Mahony and Sarah Hudson for the linguistic revision of this paper, and to Maroš
Krivý for graphics help. Particular thanks are due to my Ph.D. supervisor, Prof. Giampaolo Nuvolati,
University of Milano-Bicocca, Italy.
 84 C. Rabbiosi

Notes
1. See also www.dubaishoppingfestival.com (13 May 2010).
2. See also www.shoppingbyparis.com (13 May 2010).
3. This includes both day-trippers and visitors staying overnight, by-passing the WTO definition of
a ‘tourist’. ‘Tourists’ is more frequently used in this paper with reference to the meaning the
actors attribute to their practice (Rabbiosi, 2009). Likewise, ‘tourism’ is used with reference
to the infrastructure it involves.
4. Shopping malls are listed as tourist attractions specifically in the English-speaking world. For a
European case, consider for instance the Bicester Visitor Centre, located at Bicester Village (an
outlet village), which has won a national award for the most visited tourist information centre in
southern England. See http://www.bicester.gov.uk/Core/BicesterTownCouncil/UserFiles/Files/
TownGuide/bicestervillagecommunitypartnership.pdf
5. See 4. European Factory Outlet Center Report (Falk, 2009), or the International Council for
Shopping Centers definitions, www.icsc.org, for an insight into different ways to categorize
shopping malls.
6. A direct translation of the Italian would be ‘luxury without limits’, or ‘luxury without scrimp-
ing’, but it is worth noting that the slogan differs slightly in other languages: ‘Indulge yourself in
a guilt-free shopping tour’ in the English version, and ‘Faire des folies devient raisonnable’
(‘extravagance becomes reasonable’) in French.
Downloaded By: [Rabbiosi, Chiara] At: 12:39 9 June 2011

7. No legal definition exists. Beyond sharing the pricing policy, factory outlet villages are con-
sidered to be those malls with a surface of 10,000 m2 or more and an ‘open air’ structure.
8. Paradoxically, the poem considers the emptiness of life, and especially how the joy and illusion
of expectation must come to an unsatisfactory end when Saturday evening draws to a close. The
same is sometimes true at the end of a day out at an outlet mall.
9. The data used in this article have been collected as part of a PhD research work on the devel-
opment of factory outlet villages in Italy. The research was based on qualitative methods and
much of the knowledge in this article is based on field visits, observations, public statements
of the key actors involved in the local regeneration process or primary interviews recorded
by the author. In this last case, interviews focused on the relationship between public actors
and McArthur Glen and had an average length of a couple of hours. All the materials were col-
lected in Italian. All the translations are the author’s.
10. Data source: Profilo storico di un’area industriale. Media Valle Scrivia-Piana di Novi (2005);
Saluti dal novecento. Arquata, Serravalle, Gavi, Val Lemme e Val Borbera. Cento anni di
storia e cartoline (2003) and Ciarlo and Sassi (1998). I also refer to historical sources mainly
collected on-site, since the publications are quite scarce.
11. http://www.mcarthurglen.it/serravalle/about/style.php (2 February 2009).
12. Municipalities of Arquata Scrivia, Basaluzzo, Bosco Marengo, Cassano Spinola, Fresonara,
Gavi, Pasturana, Pozzolo Formigaro, Serravalle Scrivia and Tassarolo. Another 31 municipali-
ties have expressed an interest in becoming part of the district, most of them representing vil-
lages with no existing retail or service activity.
13. www.distrettonovese.it (13 May 2010).
14. Parma, one of the Italians art cities, is 160 km far from Serravalle Scrivia, 1:40 h by car.
Nevertheless, the city is only 30 km far and a 30 min drive from the direct competitor of the
SDO, Fidenza Village Outlet opened in 2003.

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