Effect of tourists’ attitude on the relationship of customer-based brand equity (CBBE) and destination brand loyalty : the case of visit beautiful Terengganu / Hilmy Othman

The growth of tourism industry has experienced a linear increase in the past years, and it is one of the main contributors to Malaysia’s economy and income. For this reason, destination management organizations (DMOs) have significant roles to promote and market the tourist’s destinations to maximize the growth, such as to enhance a strong destination image towards brand loyalty. The Visit Beautiful Terengganu campaign is an example of promotions launched by the State of Terengganu to boost the arrival of tourists and attract new tourists. Branding of the destination is a the principal topic in tourism marketing in terms of enhancing differentiation and competitiveness; however, establishing a strong brand has increasingly been of significant concern among DMOs. Brand equity in the service industry, particularly, tourism still remains under-explored with very few studies focusing on measuring brand equity in physical products. Therefore, the aim of this study is to understand the significance of the branding effect of a tourist destination using the case of tourists visiting Terengganu, Malaysia in 2017. Specifically, this study has two main objectives: (1) to examine how Customer-Based Brand Equity (CBBE) attributes affect tourists attitude, and (2) to determine how attitude mediates the relationship of Customer-Based Brand Equity (CBBE) attributes and destination brand loyalty. The quantitative approach is adopted by using a crosssectional study and employing the non-probability sampling. This study successfully collected data from 345 samples through a self-administered survey questionnaire. The data were analysed using SPSS and SMART-PLS. Specifically, this study computed the descriptive analysis, Pearson Correlations and PLS-SEM. The result of the study shown two CBBE attributes (i.e., brand image and brand quality) influence tourist attitude, and tourist attitude mediated the relationships of brand image and brand loyalty with destination brand loyalty. Interestingly, brand awareness was found to not have a direct nor indirect link with tourist attitude and loyalty. Beside the role of attitude as the mediating effect, the non-significant brand awareness is the highlight of the study. The implication of this study, therefore, highlight on the importance of marketing to increase awareness, as it is not a dimension in the CBBE in this study. Increased awareness about the tourist destination is expected to link to tourist attitude and later influence loyalty. Finally, this study calls for future research to investigate on the roles of tourist demographic factors on brand image and tourist attitude as well as loyalty.