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Destination

brand positions of a competitive set of near-home destinations.


Pike, Steven (2008)
Reflection of the findings of the article mentioned above and critical discussion of the current
state of art of destination branding written by Lisa Hammertinger

In his paper from the year 2008, Steven Pike states that it is very important for destinations
to differentiate themselves. Competition is getting stronger and stronger and many places
offer similar things to visitors, which makes them substitutable. He also mentions various
advantages that branding can bring for destinations, like an increased purchase intent of
potential visitors, increased sales or even a higher customer loyalty. The literature review of
the article shows, that there is only a limited number of papers on the topic of branding
existing: 74 from 1998 on. Most of the papers focus on brand strategy development. The
literature review was the basis for a very valuable part of this paper, namely the nine
potential research gaps that were identified. These gaps include various different
perspectives of the branding issue, like destination umbrella strategies and whether they are
successful or not. Another interesting research gap constitutes the question if the local
residents of a branded destination agree with the brand identity and if they consider it to
be truthful or not. Pike stated, that some research on branding found out, that brand slogans
and logos many times dont effectively differentiate destinations from others, and that the
promotion of destinations has seen not many creative ideas in general. Various other
potential research gaps are pointed out and suggested for further research by Pike, like the
question to what extent one certain brand is suitable for different target groups or how
customer relationship marketing can be included in strategies or how visitor relationship
marketing can be implemented in a destination. The research conducted by Pike included a
measurement of brand performance and its effectiveness over a period of four years. He
adopted a customer-based brand equity approach a concept that became interesting as a
measurement for brand performance by that time around 2008. It is about market
perceptions and is able to link future performance to past marketing efforts. The concept is
based on hierarchy, whereas brand salience is at the foundation. The question is if the brand
is even present in the target groups minds. Then, brand associations are part of the
hierarchy, whereat destination image is often mentioned in tourism literature. At the top of
the hierarchy stands brand loyalty. Brand salience showed only little change in preferences
over the years, which suggests that a destination that is not in peoples mind or decision set

is not very likely to be elected in the short term. The brand associations showed no big
changes over the years either, but anyway showed some clear associations in general that
visitors have with the specific destinations. This knowledge is valuable when it comes to
deciding on what the brand of a destination should focus on, as it is according to Pike highly
recommendable to reinforce the aspects for which the destination is perceived positively for
in peoples minds. Financial aspects should be considered as well when it comes to branding.
First of all, Pike mentions the issue of potential additional revenues from brand licensing as a
gap that future researchers could put emphasis on. On the other hand, introducing a brand
to a destination and accordingly rebranding or repositioning strategies cause significant
investment in resources that have to be held up in the long run. Pike states, that researchers
should be very careful with recommendations on the use of these strategies for DMOs,
especially when their resources are limited. This paper is a very valuable contribution to the
limited portfolio of branding research as it provides knowledge about the possibility to
monitor and track destination brand positions over a period of time and also points out
interesting gaps that can be addressed in further research on destination branding. As the
article at hand was published six years ago, the following paragraph delivers insight into the
current state of art in destination branding.

Very interesting at this point is a paper published from Pike most recently in 2014, where the
exact same study was conducted again: Brand performance of the same five destinations
was measured this time between 2003 and 2012, again based on the CBBE (consumer-based
brand equity). The results showed, that the visitors perceptions still almost didnt change
over the 10-year period. Pike himself as well published further papers on some of the
research gaps he mentioned in his article from 2008 one of them together with Samantha
Murdy (2011) on visitor relationship marketing opportunities. The study showed, that
destination managers consider visitor relationship marketing as very important, but the
strategic intent by DMOs to invest in it is limited. Together with Mason Russel he also
published a paper in 2011 on the competitiveness of destinations with regard to brand
positioning. In a study published in 2014 also by Pike, Bianchi and Lings the CBBE model was
used as a tool to explore attitudes of consumers in a long-haul travel context and was
named to be an appropriate model for researchers. As Pike mentioned in his article from
2008, destination branding concerns different stakeholders. Garcia, Gomez and Molina

(2012) present the Success Index of Triple-Diamonds for the measurement of a destinations
branding success with special focus on different stakeholders, not only on visitors
perceptions. A very recent publication (Campelo et al., 2014) stresses out the importance of
sense of place when it comes to destination branding. It focuses on the importance of
positioning the habitants of place at the center of a branding strategy in order to develop a
successful and effective destination brand. Pike and Page make some suggestions in a
publication on destination marketing (2014) for further research on destination branding,
like that there is still not much literature available on the topic of modeling destination
brand identity. Another issue mentioned by them that would benefit from further research
is to which extent a slogan is effective in terms of meeting customer wants. Also they state
that research on what makes a destination brand slogan successful is limited altogether.



References

Bianzi, C./Pike, S./Lings, I. (2013): Investigating attitudes towards three South American
destinations in an emerging long haul market using a model of consumer-based brand equity
(CBBE). Tourism Management 14, pp. 214-223

Campelo, A./Aitken, R./Thyne, M./Gnoth, J. (2014): Sense of Place: The Importance for
Destination Branding. Journal of Travel Research. 53(2), pp. 154-166

Garcia, J.A./Gomez, M./Molina, A. (2012): A destination-branding model: An empirical
analysis based on stakeholders. Tourism Management 33(3), pp. 646-661

Murdy, S./Pike, S. (2011): Perceptions of visitor relationship marketing opportunities by
destination marketers: An importance-performance analysis. Tourism Management 33, pp.
1281-1285

Pike, S. (2008): Destination brand positions of a competitive set of near-home destinations.
Tourism Management 30, pp. 857-544


Pike, S. (2014): Destination Brand Performance Measurement Over Time, in Woodside,
A./Kozak, M. (ed.): Tourists Perceptions and Assessments. Advances in Culture, Tourism and
Hospitality Research, Volume 8, pp. 111-120

Pike, S./Page, S.J. (2014): Destination Marketing Organizations and destination marketing:
A narrative analysis of the literature. Tourism Management 41, pp. 202-227

Pike, S./Russel, M. (2011): Destination competitiveness through the lens of brand
positioning: the case of Australias Sunshine Coast. Current Issues in Tourism 14(2), pp. 169-
182

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