Brand Equity of a Tourist Destination

Hwa-Kyung Kim,Timothy Lee

doi:10.3390/su10020431

Hwa-Kyung Kim, Timothy Lee

Open Access

https://doi.org/10.3390/su10020431

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Abstract

In the current climate of severe competition among tourist destinations, the importance of brand equity in tourism marketing is increasing. This study looks at the impact of branding in relation to the largest group of inbound overseas tourists to South Korea, the Chinese. Data for the current study were obtained from a survey of tourists visiting Seoul from the Greater China region, including Mainland China, Hong Kong, Macao, Taiwan, and the Chinese living in Southeast Asia. The survey was conducted in popular sightseeing spots, four and five-star hotels in the Seoul Metropolitan Area, and the Incheon International Airport. The respondents were selected randomly, with effort expended to avoid any potential bias in the composition of the sample. Out of a total of 385 distributed questionnaires, 350 (China 191, Hong Kong 71, Taiwan 68, others 20) were selected as valid and finally used in the analysis. The results of this study suggest that price and word of mouth have beneficial effects on perceived quality, publicity, and brand awareness, and advertisement has beneficial effects on brand image. We also found that brand awareness and perceived quality have impacts on brand image, and brand image is related to brand loyalty. This is a pioneering study on the relationships between influencing factors, destination brand equity and its elements, and brand loyalty, with respect to Seoul, South Korea, as a tourism destination for tourists from China.

Highlights

Creating and developing a “brand” is one of the core-strategies of tourist destination management [1]
To overcome and complement these limitations of previous studies, this study aimed to provide data to inform tourist management strategies for Seoul, and to assist in the promotion of effective destination branding to Chinese tourists by examining the relationship between brand equity influencing factors, their components, and the creation of brand loyalty
After considering the results of earlier research that found a causal relationship between tourism destination brand equity influencing factors and brand perceived quality [43,78,96], a significant cause and effect relationship between tourism destination brand equity influencing factors and brand awareness [51,97], and a relationship between tourism destination brand equity influencing factors and brand image [38,68,69,77], it is concluded that there is an influencing relationship between each variable

Summary

Introduction

Creating and developing a “brand” is one of the core-strategies of tourist destination management [1]. Branding of the destination is one of the principal topics in tourism marketing in terms of enhancing differentiation and competitiveness [6,7,8,9,10], but establishing a strong brand has increasingly been of significant concern because of fierce competition between places for visitor expenditures [11,12]. The lack of points of difference between most South Korean tourism destinations has led to deepening competition among them, resulting in the recognition of the importance of brand as an effective method to win markets [13,14,15,16,17]. South Korea (Korea, hereafter) has experienced rapid growth of international tourist arrival numbers in recent years, yet competition with neighboring countries remains fierce. It is recognized that the branding of Seoul, which is the predominant Korean tourist destination is vital

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