Traveling to your match? Assessing the predictive potential of Plog’s travel personality in destination marketing

ABSTRACT

This study revisits .Plog’s travel personality model in a true experimental setting and tests the model’s predictive power. The specific aim is to examine whether attitudinal and behavioral responses toward a destination vary as a function of the congruity between the tourist’s travel personality and the characteristics of the destination as perceived from an advertising message. The concept of self-congruity serves as a foundation for the theoretical framework. Results indicate message-personality congruity had a significant influence on visit intention via attitudes as mediators. This study provides theoretical implications for the predictive potential of Plog’s model as well as strategic marketing implications for destinations.

KEYWORDS:

• Psychocentric-allocentric
• Plog’s travel personality
• self-congruity
• destination promotion
• personality-driven marketing

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the BB21+ Project 2019 [N/A].