ARE DESTINATIONS BRANDS? DO THEY HAVE PERSONALITY? CATARINA AMARO - CLÁUDIA SEABRA
ABSTRACT Brand personality consists of a set of human characteristics associated with a specific brand (Aaker, 1997). Brand personality plays a highly important role in the consumer behaviour area. Past research shows that brands can serve as conduits used to communicate consumers’ own identity, status and aspirations. This symbolic use of brands is due to the fact that consumers identify with brands with traits of human personality. For this reason, the brand personality concept has gained increasing attention in marketing literature. Research in the area of destination brands personality, can contribute for the strategy, positioning and communication of tourism destinations since each one has unique characteristics. Thus, as the human personality affects the relationships between people, the destination brand personality builds the basis of the relationship between the consumer and the destination because represents the emotional and humanized side of the destination. So, becomes essential to analyse its influence in the consumers’ decision making, especially in the destination choice process. This study intends to make a literature review of the brand personality literature, including destination brands. The main goal is to analyse the importance given by the consumer to a destination brand intimately linked with its emotional and human perspective. KEY WORDS: Destination Brand Personality; Consumer Behaviour in Tourism; Decision Making; Destination choice; Destination Marketing.
DETAILS ABOUT AUTHORS: CATARINA AMARO MASTER’S DEGREE STUDENT catarina.amaro@gmail.com CLÁUDIA SEABRA PROFESSOR cseabra@estv.ipv.pt FOR BOTH AUTHORS: POLYTECHNIC INSTITUTE OF VISEU VISEU, PORTUGAL
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