Destination branding in tourism: insights from social identification, attachment and experience theories

ABSTRACT

Using social identification, attachment and experience theories, this study aims to develop and test a theoretical model of destination branding, which integrates the concepts of destination brand experience, identification, value congruence, attachment and tourist’s behavioural intentions. To investigate these issues, the present study draws on tourist data collected from key tourism destinations in India, including in Jammu and Kashmir. Structural equation modelling is used to analyse the data. Findings suggest that brand experience, value congruence, and destination credibility exert differing effects on destination brand identification, which subsequently affects tourists’ destination attachment, advocacy, and brand loyalty towards tourism destinations. As such, this study bids newer insight into the role of destination branding, from which we develop relevant implications.

KEYWORDS:

• Destination branding
• brand experience
• destination attachment
• destination identification
• destination advocacy
• destination loyalty

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Raouf Ahmad Rather

Raouf Ahmad Rather is a Research Associate in The Department of Tourism Studies at Central University of Kashmir, Jammu and Kashmir, India. His research interests are in the area of tourism destination branding, customer identification, cocreation, service innovation, customer engagement and customer loyalty. His work to-date is published in journals, including International Journal of Contemporary Hospitality Management, European Journal of Marketing, Journal of Hospitality Marketing & Management, Service Industries Journal, Journal of Global Scholars of Marketing Science, and among others. He can be contacted at [email protected]

Ashaq Hussain Najar

Ashaq Hussain Najar is an Assistant Professor in The Department of Tourism Studies at Central University of Kashmir, Jammu and Kashmir, India. His research interest centers on destination marketing, conflict exhibited destinations, recovery marketing strategies, environmental indicators, sustainable tourism development. His work to-date is published in journals, including Journal of Hospitality and Research, South Asian Journal of Tourism and Heritage, Heritage & Tourism: Public potential and Problems, and among others. He can be contacted at [email protected]

Dhouha Jaziri

Dhouha Jaziri is a Lecturer at the faculty of economic and management sciences of Sousse (FSEGSO), Université de Sousse, Tunisia. Her research concerns mainly the experiential marketing, customer experience, the customer knowledge management, customer brand engagement, and tourism management. She has a set of peer-reviewed publications and communications around the world (Academy of Marketing, Cardiff, (2013)), GECSO (2013, 2016) Nancy/Paris- France, Lithuania (2013), Spain (2015). She is a member of editorial Advisory Board (IGI global) and she has a set of books’ chapters and articles in high ranked journals in marketing and management field (as JBR). She can be contacted at [email protected]