Abstract

Due to the accelerated pace of modern life, consumers reduce time of purchase decisions and tend to choose services that match their own personality. The development of the brand of tourist destination needs to introduce new, appropriate extension to meet the needs of tourists in order to maintain exuberant vitality. So, what the perception of the brand personality of tourist destination is and whether it has an impact on the effectiveness of tourists’ evaluation of extended brand are needed to research. Based on a tourism website on visitors’ reviews and advertisements on scenic areas, this paper examined Shandong Province and discussed differences in regional tourism brands. Firstly, tourists’ comments were collected from the tourism website and high-frequency words that describe individual characteristics using the content analysis method were extracted. Secondly, the characteristics of vocabulary acquisition were summarized; the tourism brand personality dimension scale was used, put corresponding data into cross-contingency tables and obtains visitors’ destination personality perception differences. Thirdly, after using group discussions and the Delphi method to obtain the Shandong tourism projected brand personality and this was compared with tourists’ brand personalities, it was revealed that the perception of Shandong promulgated by its marketers differs from visitors’ perceptions. Finally, the paper proves that tourism destination brand has a personality feature and the measurement of tourism brand personality dimensions should consider regional culture and resource advantages. Also, project brand personality is based on tourism’s market supply and perceived brand personality is based on tourism’s demand market, either on tourists’ experiences or on information acquired from actual travel. Key words: Perceived brand personality, projected brand personality, content analysis method, tourism destination brand, Shandong Province.

Highlights

  • Whether a country or a single scenic destination, brand is an important tool of destination marketing (Gao and Jiao 2014) and the shaping of the brand is a key element in tourism marketing

  • Each feature subset of the top 1,200 high-frequency words and eliminate words that either had nothing to do with this study or semantic fuzzy words, only retain words with semantic features

  • Eleven high-frequency words were shared by the four case studies, with nine feature words for three tourist areas and six feature words for two tourist areas

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Summary

Introduction

The central objective of branding is to improve brand equity, which would give destinations and competitive advantage over the others (Almeyda-Ibáñez et al, 2017). Whether a country or a single scenic destination, brand is an important tool of destination marketing (Gao and Jiao 2014) and the shaping of the brand is a key element in tourism marketing. The key to success lies in their brand personalities and interactions with the target market (Guo et al, 2011). When a destination has a clear personality, it can thrive against often-homogeneous competition (Bai and Hu, 2013) and become the bridge between tourists’ perceptions of the destination and destinations’ brand personality

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