Cultural identity of floating market and products

This blog post was translated from an academic paper. Please cite the original article.
APA
Arunrangsiwed, P. (2020). Floating Market Studies: A Literature Review. Journal of Humanities and Social Sciences University of Phayao, 8(1), 25-42.

The identity of the floating market and products

As mentioned earlier, wisdom and culture make the floating market a unique tourist destination that is different from other tourist destinations and this place identity will help attract tourists (จิตราภรณ์ สุทธิวรเศรษฐ์ และ คณะ, 2557). Therefore, people should identify that factor that can create that identity, as aforementioned in the previous paragraph. ณัชชา กริ่มใจ (2552) suggests that Thai traditional style should be used to promote floating market identity for foreign tourists. For Thai tourists, ธิดารัตน์ ตันนิรัตร์ (2557) found that they like a unique shooting scene. This is similar to the finding of ศิริรัตน์ ขานทอง, ละเอียด ศิลาน้อย, และ กันฑิมาลย์ จินดาประเสริฐ (2562) that Thai tourists are paying more attention to their physical environment.

At the same time, although the floating market has a distinctive style of marketing from other tourist destinations, the products are not unique. People do not need to travel to the floating market to buy those products, but they could buy the particular product from anywhere (รัศมี อุตเสนา, 2559). Moreover, in some large floating markets, there are also many stores that sell similar products, too (กมลทิพย์ กันตะเพ็ง และ พิทักษ์ ศิริวงศ์, 2560). This is similar to the problem found in OTOP industry (จัตตุรงค์ เพลินหัด, 2558)

The shop operators or entrepreneur in the floating market should remember the fact that the tourists are not only satisfied with the local beautiful environment, but these people do not like the repeating of local products and the repeating of the atmosphere (เจตน์สฤษฎิ์ สังขพันธ์, เก็ตถวา บุญปราการ, ชุติมา หวังเบ็ญหมัด, Kathylene Remegio, และ อรุณพร อธิมาตรไมตรี, 2559). The uniqueness of the product and the landscape will be able to create a lot of tourists’ memories (ชัยยุทธ ถาวรานุรักษ์, 2562). What is obvious is that the combination of Thai and Chinese cultures creates a unique identity for the Samut Songkhram community, including agriculture, lifestyle and physical expression or site design. These can be clearly seen by tourists at the floating market in the particular province (สุภาภรณ์ จินดามณีโรจน์, 2553-2554). With limited resources and similar products of all markets around Thailand, but but with different wisdom and creativity, local people could create products that are not repeated or boring (จัตตุรงค์ เพลินหัด, 2558) can increase perceived product value for agricultural products, too (พราว อรุณรังสีเวช และ สิริพร มีนานันทน์, 2559).

Cultural identity of floating market and products
It is important to note that I wrote an article for a conference in Phayao, and my article was published in Journal of Humanities and Social Sciences University of Phayao. I translated to manuscript into English during the peer review process or about Mar 2020. I kept the translated version until my article was published in the academic journal. Why did I translate? I think it may increase the number of citations for my paper.