Exploring Relationships between Mongolian Destination Brand Equity, Satisfaction and Destination Loyalty

Abstract

There has been growing interest among researchers in the concept of the customer-based brand equity (CBBE) model that is widely applied in marketing research. Viewing a tourist destination as a brand, the CBBE model has been applied recently to tourism studies and incorporates the notions of perceptual brand equity and behavioural brand equity from the marketing literature. This study proposes the destination brand equity model by incorporating various antecedents, including perceived service quality, destination awareness and destination image as the perceptual brand equity, and destination loyalty as the behavioural brand equity. A relationship model between perceptual brand equity components, tourist satisfaction and destination loyalty is constructed and applied to Mongolia as a tourist destination. The study's results in general confirm the causal relationship between perceptual brand equity and behavioural brand equity. More specifically, a relationship path is identified: destination awareness → destination image → perceived quality → satisfaction → destination loyalty. The empirical implications are discussed, as is the value of the approach for destination marketers.