| Summary: | 碩士 === 淡江大學 === 未來學研究所碩士班 === 99 === Consumption plays an important part of tourism. Nowadays nearly every place can become a tourist destination, consumption cathedrals like shopping centers and department stores are also thematized as the object of tourist gaze. However, current research on tourism and consumption tend to consider this issue separately. This research thus aims to link the consumption and tourism studies together through the case study of the ‘Taipei 101’─the tallest building serves both as an international shopping mall and a tourist landscape.
Drawing upon theories of tourism and consumption (from tourist gaze to authenticity, and from disneyisation of society to distinction) and multiple methods (case study, document research, observation in the field and in-depth interview), I aim to discuss the similarity and contradiction between the tourist and consumer practices in the ‘Taipei 101’ by considering it as both a tourist and consuming place. This research is divided into three parts: Firstly, it discusses how the ‘Taipei 101’ as the tallest iconic building in the world grounded its construction as a tourist destination. Second, it analyses the construction of Taipei 101 both as consumption and tourist places. Finally, it analyzes the co-construction and contradiction occurred in the consuming and tourist practices in the ‘Taipei 101’.
The ‘Taipei 101’ assembles different visitors, within which tourists are consumers and consumers enjoy their fantasy as tourists. However, local and cosmopolitan gazes differ for domestic and international visitors. When the international visitors search for the local authenticity, domestic visitors look for the cosmopolitan atmosphere as the tourism of daily life. Moreover, the ‘Taipei 101’ emerges as a destination of shopping tourism. Under Taiwan’s new tourism policy welcoming non-package tourists, department stores now try hard to turn itself to be a new tourist destination. That is, shopping tourism worth receiving more academic and social attention.
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