Thesis
Brand influence on tourists’ booking intention across tourism sectors : evaluation of customer-based brand equity within package holidays
- Creator
- Rights statement
- Awarding institution
- University of Strathclyde
- Date of award
- 2024
- Thesis identifier
- T16969
- Person Identifier (Local)
- 201962171
- Qualification Level
- Qualification Name
- Department, School or Faculty
- Abstract
- The effect and importance of branding are widely discussed within marketing literature. In particular, brand performance and the role of brands for customers’ decision-making are acclaimed fields of research. One key theory in this field is customer-based brand equity (CBBE). While it is common that one product is connected to one brand, the service-related tourism industry is an exception, as tourism experiences often comprise a variety of brands. Multi-attribute package holidays include a heterogeneous composition of (online) travel agency, tour operator, transport, accommodation, and destination combined with a high level of uncertainty, due to the intangible nature of services. Despite the prevalence of package sales and consumption, a semi systematic literature review of 108 academic papers revealed that branding aspects of multi branded packages are rarely taken into consideration in tourism-related CBBE research. This research expands both the general CBBE as well as the tourism branding literature. With its focus on bundles in the form of package holidays it explores a seldomly studied context and introduces the concept of customer-based bundle brand equity (CBBBE). Specifically, it elucidates the role of tourism brands in customers’ holiday booking choices and allows for subsequent inter-sector comparisons of brand relevance. By combining qualitative interviews and focus groups (n=34) with a quantitative online experiment (n=402) among travellers this study follows an exploratory sequential mixed methods design to allow for rich and in-depth insights alongside generalisable results. The synthesised findings suggest that the influence of different tourism brands on the customer’s booking choices differs between the individual and bundled context. Regarding package holidays, CBBBE is mostly shaped by the transport and accommodation brand, whereas booking intention heavily depends upon the destination brand. In addition, CBBBE was found to be positively related to booking intention. The adapted measurement tool and subsequent analysis indicate that CBBBE results from CBBE of its attributes (i.e., tourism sector brands). An additive evaluation process (in conjunction with the applicability of multi-attribute utility theory (MAUT)) was revealed since no significant interaction effects between individual attributes were detected. It is recommended that future research set to other types of bundles (e.g., financial services or beauty products) is completed to verify the applicability of the findings across industries and contexts.
- Advisor / supervisor
- Tsougkou, Eleni
- Resource Type
- Note
- This thesis was previously held under moratorium from 7th June 2024 until 7th June 2026.
- DOI
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