Abstract
The purpose of this paper is to discuss the significance of customer value as the core of the tourist product and as the starting point of product development in tourism. First a new conceptualisation, that is, a model of prerequisites for a tourist service, adapted from Edwardsson's and Olsson's (1999) model is presented. Then a literature review on the concept of customer value is offered. The empirical part of the paper presents results of a case study, in which the content of a rural tourism customer value was investigated. Customer value can be divided into three stages. Expected value reflects the desired value of the customer, referring to the needs, goals and purposes of the customer, and how customers expect the alternative products to satisfy these needs. Perceived value reflects both the guest's perceptions and experiences before entering the facilities of the service provider and those the guest encounters while the service is actually being performed. The experienced value is formed both by the experiences encountered during the service process (episodes in the modules) and by those that occur after the guest has departed and reflects customer satisfaction with the received value, evaluated against the customers' goals and purposes. The results from the empirical study show that the process model on the formulation of value would seem to work well when describing how the goal of the holiday takes shape in the desired actions and through this into the desired consequences during the service process. The results show that the value-expectations of the customers in rural tourism are very emotional, but when the decision has been made about what kind of service processes are desired in order to yield the value related to the goals, the criteria for the choice of the product, which affect the decision to buy the products, are fairly concrete and, particularly during the first time, they are factors related to the technical and functional properties of the service system.

Key words: Customer value, tourist product, product development in tourism, rural touris