Obstacles to achieving cross-border tourism governance: A multi-scalar approach focusing on the German-Czech borderlands

This paper aims to identify distinctive obstacles to the establishment of tourism destination governance in both transnational and within-country borderlands. Analysis of the German-Czech borderlands, a region also incorporating within-country borders between three German federal states, indicates the multi-scalar and political contestations of cross-border tourism collaboration. Local tourism projects are generally successful, both on a transnational German-Czech level and between the German states of Bavaria, Saxony and Thuringia. However, structural cross-border destination management does not exist because of (transnational) multi-scalar institutional alignment problems and (internal) tourism-specific destination-level power contestations. Understanding destination management processes in borderlands, therefore, requires: (i) explicit multi-scalar analysis; (ii) recognition of both transnational and within-country contexts; (iii) more cross-pollination between tourism planning and cross-border governance research.     

Social Networking the Brand—An Exploration of the Drivers of Brand Image in the South African Beer Market

Social network marketing has risen to the fore as an innovative and cost effective method of reaching a target audience. However, owing to the recentness of this marketing technique, there is little scholarly research in this area, especially in emerging markets. This study considered the impact of interactivity and media richness on brand attitude and brand image in the South African beer market. It also tested whether brand involvement has a moderating effect in this regard. The empirical work was conducted through an electronic survey of Facebook fan page users. The results revealed that interactivity had a positive effect on brand attitude, whilst media richness did not. Brand involvement, tested for a moderating effect on the above relationships, was not found to be significant. As expected, brand attitude was found to be strongly linked to brand image in this context. The findings stress the importance of bidirectional communication in favor of media rich design. This suggests that marketers of beer would be well advised to engage with customers on fan pages in routinely responding to their comments and allowing them to upload suitable content. If consumers feel that they have ‘ownership’ of these pages and are able to have a positive influence on brand evolution, fan pages are likely to yield positive results in social media campaigns.     

Managing a Global Retail Brand in Different Markets: Meta-Analyses of Customer Responses to Service Encounters

This study investigates how retailers can leverage their brand to shape customers’ satisfaction with service encounters. It develops and tests hypotheses about how brand, store, and consumer factors moderate customer responses to experience clues during retail service encounters. Six meta-regression analyses synthesize and compare results from 842 satisfaction equations describing customers’ encounters with a global retailer operating 400 stores in 32 countries. The results show how customers weigh their perceptions of service encounters differently depending on brand, store, and consumer factors. In markets where customers believe the retailer has high holistic brand quality, they place less weight on experience clues within the store. In markets where customers believe the retailer’s service brand promise, they place more weight on in-store experience clues. In markets where the retailer promises utilitarian value, customers weigh functional experience clues more heavily. In markets with an online purchasing channel, the effect of experience clues common to offline and online store environments is magnified, and unique clues are diminished. In addition, customers heavily weigh experience clues that fit their goals. In general, retail success factors include high brand quality (which makes customers more forgiving), a service brand promise that is mirrored in the store image (which makes customers attend to the experience clues aligned with them), and the careful monitoring and managing of retail touchpoints (to customize experience clues to each market). In this way, retailers can use customer-based strategies to effectively design and manage their global retail brand in different markets.     

Price image consequences

This study investigates the consequences of price image. Two conditions, a policy of intermediate price condition and a policy of low price condition, were distinguished in an experiment. Three moderators (consumers' price conscientiousness, retailer's motives perceived by consumers and consumers' familiarity with the retailer) were considered for these two conditions. Using partial least squares analyses (PLS), we propose integrated models of the consequences of price image highlighting the direct and indirect effects of this concept on consumers' satisfaction, trust, attitude and future behavioral intentions to the retailer. This research fills a gap in the literature since previous studies have mainly focused on the antecedents of price image or have only investigated specific links between the variables considered. Finally, considering our findings, we recommend to managers to favor either a policy of intermediate or low price depending of their consumers' characteristics.     

Predictors and effects of retail brand equity – A cross-sectoral analysis

Although retailers increasingly seek to position themselves as strong, attractive, and unique brands, little is known about differences in retail branding among different retail sectors. This study analyzes the importance of perceived retail attributes for consumer-based retail brand equity (RBE), particularly the varying roles of these attributes in important retail sectors, and the effects of RBE on intentional loyalty. The authors examine empirical data on 2112 consumer evaluations of retail firms in the grocery, fashion, electronics, and DIY sectors and apply multi-group structural equation modeling. The results indicate that the importance of retail attributes for RBE varies among the different sectors, but a strong and stable link between RBE and consumers' intentional loyalty is evident across retail sectors. The sector-specific and cross-sectoral observations in this study provide managers with specific knowledge on the main levers of RBE in different retail contexts.     

Advancing destination image: The destination content model

Knowledge of the mental representations that individuals hold about tourist destinations are important to understand their intentions. These mental destination representations have often been investigated by applying the concept of destination image. This study argues that the extant literature is often rather atheoretical and lacks operational rigor. These are major shortcomings which undoubtedly hinder the development of academic and managerial insights. In response, this study draws on contemporary psychology to develop the destination content model, comprising three informational components held in individuals‘ minds about destinations. The present study further outlines preferable methods and measures for each component, thus aiding researchers to investigate mental destination representations.     

Push or pull? Identifying rock climbing tourists' motivations

The aims of this research are to clarify the motivations of rock climbing tourists by using a push and pull framework and to investigate the relationship between tourist motivation and overall satisfaction. In a survey of 473 rock climbing tourists in the Geyikbayırı region in Antalya, Turkey, the most important push motivations were identified as ‘physical setting’ and ‘challenge’, while ‘climbing novelty seeking’ and ‘climbing tourism infrastructure’ were the most important pull motivations. Furthermore, the findings of this study indicated that overall satisfaction of rock climbers can be determined by their push and pull motivations. The results also showed that motivations of rock climbers differ according to their experience levels. The paper ends with theoretical contributions of the study and its managerial implications.     

Tourist Satisfaction and Destination Image of Vietnam's Ha Long Bay

Although considerable work has been done on destination image as a whole, far less research has investigated the differences in destination image assessments for domestic versus international visitors in developing countries. This study offers findings that illustrate the differences in perception of destination image, satisfaction attributes, and intention among domestic and international visitors to Ha Long Bay, a United Nations Educational Scientific and Cultural Organization World Heritage Site in Vietnam. The results of a survey on 650 tourists suggest that international visitors to the Ha Long Bay region have higher standards and are more critical in their evaluation of services than domestic visitors when judging this destination. Destination image is a common factor determining the level of satisfaction of both groups. Basic and augmented services were found to influence international visitors’ future intention toward the destination. This finding implies that the destination managers of Ha Long Bay need to improve current standard of augmented services to yield higher visitors’ propensity to recommend and return to the destination.     

Intended destination image positioning at sub-provincial administration level in China

Tourism development is officially recognized by the Chinese central government as one of the strategic pillars of the country's economy. Hence, regional authorities are responsible for developing positioning strategies for their tourism destinations. This study investigates the following: (1) the variety of planned image positions among sub-provincial prefectures in China; (2) the commonalities of these image propositions across China and (3) the differences within and across the regions and provinces. This research is based on a representative sample of tourism development plans of 77 prefectural administrations. The texts (in Chinese language) were content analyzed and condensed in two steps into semantically similar terms and concepts. The results show that image-positioning objectives are generally lean in the planning documents lacking sophistication and creativity. The variety of used image terms tempts to believe in quite different positioning goals. Yet, from a compound perspective, this does not yield very distinct overall image positions.     

The 7th Asia-Pacific CHRIE Conference

Despite the increase in use of user-generated electronic content as an information source by tourists, its influence in destination image formation is not yet fully understood. This research aimed to explore the communicated destination image held by tourists to Zanzibar Island (Tanzania) by utilizing communications in Lonely Planet. Content analysis of 214 posts using TextSTAT yielded 13 destination attributes. Comparatively, functional attributes were dominant in potential tourists whereas post-travel image perception was dominated by psychological attributes. Those who have visited tended to have a positive image of the island compared with those who are planning to visit the island. The results necessitate the differential use of the functional- and psychological-based information in communicating with tourists at different information-search stages. Studies to capture communications in another language are recommended as well as the employment of methodologies that might reveal hidden images held by tourists.