Anthony Foley, John Fahy and Anne-Marie Ivers
Introduction
Tourism is a major world industry and very broad in its scope – including the travel trade (retail and wholesale), accommodation, transport, activities, heritage and attractions, retail and food, media, state and industry destination management organizations (DMOs) (McKercher, Denizci-Guillet and Ng 2011). Tourism is experiential in nature, and whether linked to business or pleasure, is characterized by sustained consumer interaction with tourism service providers and the destination. The Internet has had a transformational effect on how these consumer interactions take place. This is primarily due to the shift in the power relationship between the fi rm and the consumer, with the Internet providing the information and communications potential to fuel this empowerment (Urban 2005; Pires, Stanton and Rita 2006). Tourists or potential tourists routinely refer to the Web for information on travel propositions, and importantly, consult with other tourists online to establish their experiences and opinions of the tourism service before reservation. It is particularly interesting to refl ect on the infl uence of the Internet on the brand.
The brand is very much about personal experience, so different consumers will interpret the brand in different ways; indeed the same person can interpret different meanings of the brand over time (Allen, Fournier and Miller 2008). Technologies facilitate online communities of consumers to share and review information on tourism brands, and to ‘co-construct’ an individualised and unique experience (Muniz and O’Guinn 2001; Bengtsson 2003; Prahalad and Ramaswamy 2004). This co-creation experience can be seen as the brand (Prahalad and Ramaswamy 2004). Therefore, it is no longer the sole responsibility of the marketing department to construct the brand meaning – the consumer is a key partner in this process (Brown, Kozinets and Sherry 2003; Coupland 2005). Internet technologies expose the tourist to the brand offering before, during and after the actual consumption of the experience. This chapter will investigate the various web applications which infl uence the tourist brand experience, at the different stages of brand consumption. We will also draw out conclusions and implications for tourism fi rms wishing to enhance the brand experience for the tourist, through the Internet.
Brand experience in the Internet age
Co-creation of the tourism brand experience
A brand is the name or symbol or design or other characterizing feature of a product or service which differentiates it from competing offerings, and which represents all of the consumer goodwill built up towards the brand (Kotler, Keller, Brady, Goodman and Hansen 2009). It is possible to brand anything, goods, services, ideas, organizations – and of course, destinations (Kotler et al. 2009). In order to provide a rationale for discussing brand ‘meaning’, it is pertinent to focus on the belief that a brand can have a personality; essentially ‘human characteristics associated with the brand’ (Aaker 1997: 347). Consumers effectively humanize brands by translating the brand into personality traits (Aaker 1997). Brand meaning is therefore complex as brands can have different meaning for consumers over time (Allen et al. 2006). Organizations therefore need to consider the role of both brand managers and consumers in the brand co-creation process (Brown, Kozinets and Sherry 2003; Coupland 2005).
Consumers do not have to be necessarily excited or engaged by the brand, they simply project certain personality traits onto the brand (Brakus, Schmitt and Zarantonello 2009) as part of the brand experience co-creation process. If a brand can take on human personality charac-teristics it also follows that a consumer can form a relationship with a brand (Allen et al. 2008).
This separate identity of the brand from the company which created or managed it removes the brand from the realm of total control by the brand promoter. This was something that was brought forcibly to the attention of Coca Cola in 1985, with the response to its ill-judged deci-sion to change the formulation of Coke, in response to the growing threat of its main competi-tor, Pepsi Cola. The launch of ‘New Coke’ created a tidal wave of protest, including the formation of adhoc groups such as the ‘Old Cola Drinkers of America’, claiming 10,000 members, estab-lished to vocalize opposition to the interloper (Coca Cola 2012). This phenomenon of consumer loyalty to the brand and in opposition to the fi rm, possibly the most successful brand promoter in marketing history, marked one of the fi rst signals that the company no longer has a monopoly on brand management, and even less on the values of the brand, particularly consumers’ identi-fi cation with the brand. One clear message is that stronger brands result from greater involve-ment with the brand by consumers – but also effective brand manageinvolve-ment involveinvolve-ment (Coupland 2005). It is possibly less likely that the Coke marketing debacle would happen now, as the marketing manager can more tangibly hear the voice of the customer, through the various social media available. Therefore, while social media raises many challenges for the tourism and hospitality fi rm, it importantly acts as a conduit to what the customer is thinking.
The centrality of experience is captured by Gilmore and Pine (2002) where they equate the experience with effective marketing: ‘the way to reach your customers is to create an experience with them’ (Gilmore and Pine 2002: 3). Tourism experience can be defi ned as ‘an individual’s subjective evaluation and undergoing (i.e. affective, cognitive, and behavioural) of events related to his/her tourist activities which begins before (i.e. planning and preparation), during (i.e. at the destination), and after the trip (i.e. recollection)’ (Tung and Ritchie 2011:
1369). The focus on stages of experience (pre, during and after) in this defi nition will be echoed later in this chapter, when we investigate the impact of various Internet applications on the tourism brand experience at different stages of consumption.
While brand involvement presumes a consumer need, brand experience is independent of motivation, interest or involvement, and can also be differentiated from customer satisfaction or delight, which occurs after consumption, unlike brand experience, which happens whenever there is brand interaction (Brakus et al. 2009). The implication of the subjective and individual nature of experience from a fi rm or destination perspective is that the tourism experience cannot be directly manufactured or delivered (Tung and Ritchie 2011). The tourism brand
experience, as with any service experience is personally and individually constructed, as refl ected in the nature of brand experience as ‘actual sensations, feelings, cognitions, and behavioural responses’ (Brakus et al. 2009: 54), and indeed, ‘(t)he experience is the brand. The brand is co-created and evolves with experiences’ (Prahalad and Ramaswamy 2004: 136). This is refl ected in a paradigmatic change in the way that value is created; no longer by the fi rm, but jointly by consumers and the fi rm, with the co-creation of the experience providing this value (Vargo and Lusch 2004; Prahalad and Ramaswamy 2004).
The experience environment is composed not only of the fi rm and its employees, channels, products and services, but also the consumer community – and the consumer co-creates his/her individual and unique experience, within this environment (Muniz and O’Guinn 2001;
Bengtsson 2003; Prahalad and Ramaswamy 2004). Essentially, the individualized brand meaning emerges – not from the brand communications of the fi rm (though this is of course signifi cant) – but through the social interaction of the members of the brand community
‘with brand meaning being socially negotiated, rather than delivered unaltered and in toto from context to context, consumer to consumer’ (Muniz and O’Guinn 2001: 414). Signifi cantly, this does not have to involve physical interactions with other brand users, but can involve online social interaction through such means as forums or blogs, or even be characterized by a psychological sense of brand community, where brand users do not necessarily interact socially with others (Carlson, Sutter and Brown 2008).
Tourism and the social media challenge
The term ‘social media’ can be used to represent all of the various Internet based applications that infl uence the tourism brand, based on Web 2.0, and using user generated content (UGC) (Kaplan and Haenlein 2010). A noticeable feature of social media is their role in extending traditional consumer word-of-mouth (WOM) into an online space (Mangold and Faulds 2009), becoming eWOM (Hennig-Thurau and Walsh 2004). Positive eWOM has been found to produce a more favourable attitude towards the brand (Jones, Aiken and Bousch 2009). Web 2.0 represents a later incarnation of the Internet marked by collaboration and content sharing, facilitated by technological functionality, provided by applications such as Adobe Flash (which enhances web pages with animation and interactivity), and RSS (Really Simple Syndication), which provides frequently updated web feed content (Kaplan and Haenlein 2010).
UGC represents online content provided by consumers on publicly available websites, facilitated in latter years by technological advances, and a more technology and media savvy younger generation (Kaplan and Haenlein 2010). An integrative defi nition of social media is
‘a group of Internet-based applications that build on the ideological and technological foundations of Web 2.0, and that allow the creation and exchange of User Generated Content’
(Kaplan and Haenlein 2010: 61). These applications include company and user blogs, email, consumer feedback websites, online discussion forums, social networking websites, virtual worlds, and content (video, image, music . . .) sharing websites (Mangold and Faulds 2009).
Specifi c attention in this chapter will be given to a number of social media that are increasingly infl uential on the brand strategy of the tourism fi rm, and the tourist experience, including user generated content; tourism communities; tourism fi rm websites; destination brand online promotion; intermediary websites; social networks; virtual environments; and blogs.
User generated content shared by individuals can be in the form of e.g. video (YouTube), text (Wikipedia) or other content such as photos (Flickr). YouTube has become an incredibly successful and prolifi c medium. Almost eight years of content is uploaded daily (70 per cent from outside the USA), and nearly 17 million people have linked YouTube to at least one social
Brand experience in the Internet age medium, while 98 of Ad Age Top 100 advertisers have had campaigns on YouTube (YouTube 2012). The brand community plays a critical role in providing a social context for understanding development of brand meaning (Muniz and O’Guinn 2001; McAlexander, Schouten and Koenig 2002). The brand community is not limited by the physical realm; apart from the social brand community, which involves consumers interacting face to face or within virtual worlds, there may also be a psychological sense of brand community, which does not involve any social interaction but where consumers have a perceived connection to other users of the brand (Carlson, Sutter, and Brown 2008). The communal interaction within the brand community can have a signifi cant impact on how the individual’s personalized brand meaning is created (Patterson and O’Malley 2006). Within the tourism industry, travellers can exchange experiences, information and recommendations in the online communities (Buhalis and Law 2008; Sanchez-Franco and Rondan-Cataluna 2010), which are more likely to be trusted by tourists than corporate communications (Buhalis and Law 2008). Tourism communities include virtualtourist.
com and tripadvisor.com. TripAdvisor provides an opportunity for guests to post reviews of tourism services providers such as hotels, and is very infl uential as a fi rst point of contact for travellers.
Tourism can be perceived to be high involvement and high risk, exacerbated by the absence of the personal touch of the travel agent, and online reviews address these issues (Papathanassis and Knolle 2011). While negative reviews can be traumatic for the tourism fi rm, there is evidence that improvements in service quality can be linked to TripAdvisor (Cunningham, Smyth, Wu and Greene 2010).
The tourism fi rm website is the electronic shop window, and by the use of virtual tours can provide a more meaningful taste of the experience awaiting the tourist. The corporate site needs to be engaging and yet informative. Many tourism fi rms now have booking engines embedded in their websites. Tourism fi rms can obtain valuable information about visitors to their website by tracking their identity and their activity on the site, and also develop potential customer data-bases by inviting enquiries and registration (Buhalis 2011). At the destination level, online brand communication and promotions are critical. DMOs are the public or private agencies responsible for management and marketing of branded destinations, and the tourism stakeholders, enterprises, local authorities etc., e.g. England Tourist Board, Destination Bristol. DMOs have become alert to the opportunities for more effective marketing presented by the Internet. This can be done through various means such as driving traffi c by linking to suitable sites, sending virtual cards to visitors to the destination with a link to the site, and also importantly, facilitating visitors to make online bookings for accommodation or other services, or at least to link to these suppliers (Raventos 2006).
Intermediary websites such as Expedia, Travelocity, Venere, Hotels.com, Booking.com are highly visible portal sites which have become mainstream in a relatively short time period (Buhalis 2011) and are likely to be among the fi rst sites the consumer will see on a search engine when seeking accommodation or other tourist services. Indeed, ‘mega travel e-mediaries . . . established as internet brands’ have become dominant in tourism ecommerce at the expense of DMOs (Hyun and Cai 2009: 38). These intermediaries provide a useful service to the consumer in aggregating details and facilitating the user in identifying accommodation that meets the time, location, benefi ts and price requested. Many of these sites also incorporate user reviews, and are forcing tourism fi rms to re-evaluate their value chains (Buhalis and Law 2008).
Social networking sites facilitate users in creating an online profi le, to invite friends to their page, to share all types of content including text, images, audio, blogs (Kaplan and Haenlin 2010).
Facebook is the dominant social network, with 845 million active subscribers at the end of 2011, 80 per cent of whom are outside North America (Facebook 2012). Virtual reality is the ‘use of a computer-generated 3D environment – called a “virtual environment” – that one can navigate
and possibly interact with, resulting in real-time simulation of one or more of the user’s fi ve senses’ (Guttentag 2010: 638). These virtual experiences can seem to be quite close to real life (Buhalis and Law 2008). The most well-known virtual environment is Second Life, where the user can explore a virtual world, represented by an avatar (Guttentag 2010). Users in Second Life can do pretty much a lot of what they can do in the non-virtual world, speaking, creating content, and even selling using Linden dollars (Kaplan and Haenlein 2010). Tourism themes are apparent in Second Life, and the Dresden Old Masters Picture Gallery was the fi rst to have a virtual representation of a museum on Second Life (Guttentag 2010).
Blogs are essentially personal web pages, mainly text based where the blog owner posts personal commentary, and there may also be a response feature (Kaplan and Haenlein 2010).
Blogs are increasingly used by companies to inform employees and customers, but have the risk of facilitating comment from employees and customers which may not be favourable to the fi rm (Kaplan and Haenlein 2010). Consumers are increasingly going online to record their views and experiences on blogs.
Implications of Internet for tourism brand experience at different stages of consumption
The Internet is particularly important in tourism, which relies on description and also representation, as it facilitates communication of tourism offerings and transactions (Buhalis 2011). The Internet has had major benefi ts for the sector, allowing tourism fi rms to communicate their offerings at much lower cost, bypassing intermediaries such as travel agencies and also critically functioning as a distribution channel, allowing tourists to reserve beds or fl ights directly (Raventos 2006). All consumer interactions with the brand comprise the brand experience (Prahalad and Ramaswamy 2004; Brakus et al. 2009). Brand experience does not necessarily have to involve consumption; it can be indirect exposure through brand communications (Brakus et al.
2009). Therefore, it is problematic to associate the brand experience exclusively with the actual consumption of the service. If the tourist is browsing the Web looking at various hotel bedroom offerings and settles on a particular one, perhaps using a virtual tour or online user review to inform the decision, the brand experience has already started. When the tourist arrives at the hotel, and the holiday or business stay commences, the brand experience is intensifi ed. The tourist may also blog his/her experience while staying. Subsequent to the stay, the tourist may post a review online, or join a virtual community. Therefore, it is useful from a management perspective to investigate the different stages of brand experience prior to consumption, at consumption, and post consumption, and this is consistent with the defi nition of tourist experience by Tung and Ritchie (2011). In particular, this will allow analysis of the infl uence of the Internet on the brand experience of the consumer from fi rst awareness of the brand through to post consumption refl ection. Figure 11.1 illustrates the different stages of brand experience, and the social media which can infl uence the brand experience at each stage. It also highlights the co-creation by the tourism fi rm/DMO and consumer of the tourist brand experience. The increasing engagement by DMOs with visitors in the tourism brand experience is apparent from the Experience Nottinghamshire website web page, ‘Your Experience’, where the DMO is explicit about how it intends to use social media to involve the visitor (Experience Nottinghamshire 2012).
Pre-consumption brand experience
The tourist brand experience begins in advance of the actual consumption of the service. A consumer investigating a potential holiday experience in France becomes exposed to commercial
Brand experience in the Internet age
communications from French tourism and travel companies, at the destination and service provider level. The Internet introduces a whole range of other tourist experiences and comments, images, video, and communities which will also infl uence this pre-consumption experience, and which will infl uence where this consumption experience happens. UGC and content sharing websites are very infl uential at this stage. The evolution of technology in wireless technologies and smart phones allows the tourist to upload images, text, video and audio to the Internet, to sites such as YouTube and Virtual Tourist (Buhalis and Law 2008; Munar 2009). These communications can be compelling as they are from other consumers and not the tourism fi rm (Buhalis and Law 2008).
DMOs and tourism fi rms can infl uence this process by encouraging travellers to post videos and images of their trips, perhaps through competitions or other incentives. Online tourist networks and communities provide probably the most infl uential Internet generated phenomena on tourism brand experience. This is because of the considerable infl uence that online consumer review has on tourist decision making (Papathassis and Knolle 2011; Sparks and Browning 2011).
Negative reviews can be magnifi ed in impact on the tourist evaluations of the tourist service (Sparks and Browning 2011). TripAdvisor has emerged as a dominant online community where consumers can share travel experiences. It has been established that for hotels benefi ting from TripAdvisor reviews, that these reviews were prominent in online searches of the hotel name (Cunningham et al. 2010).
The fi rm website is the shop window for the tourism services provider, and acts as an important source of practical information on the tourism offering. Importantly, it has the power to produce a positive or negative infl uence on the brand experience. Search engine optimization (SEO) presents the tourism fi rm with the opportunity to promote its ranking in enquiries on search engines, which is critical in exposing the tourism offering to the tourist. Tourists are not just consuming a tourism offering such as accommodation, dining or activity. They are also Figure 11.1 Stages of tourist brand experience and the Internet.
consuming a destination. Therefore, the brand experience communicated by the DMO is critically important. The functionality of DMO websites appears on a continuum from ones which are effectively just online versions of the brochure to fully interactive portal sites, where visitors can make reservations and even take a virtual tour (Hyun and Cai 2009). However, destinations have substantially failed to engage with consumer net communities, not taking the opportunity to develop virtual brands, and in many cases just digitising existing offl ine logos and brand communications (Hyun and Cai 2009).
It is important also for tourism organizations to note that communications and media messages may have a signifi cant impact upon an individual’s sense of being in a community and their perceptions of the brand community (Carlson et al. 2008). Intermediaries (such as Expedia) are also emerging as critical infl uences on pre-consumption behaviour, acting as ‘one-stop-shop’
vehicles where visitors can reserve all travel needs including accommodation, transport, car rental etc. (Buhalis 2011). Tourism fi rms and DMOs need to be aware of their capability to communicate effectively with the target audience through an engaging web presence. The tourist may also be able to experience the tourism brand virtually through a virtual tour in advance of consumption of the service. Virtual reality is particularly useful in tourism, providing a taste of the service prior to booking; a virtual environment allows the consumer to make a more informed decision (Guttentag 2010).
Consumption brand experience
Brand experience is created individually by the consumer, whenever there is interaction with the brand (Prahalad and Ramaswamy 2004). However, one would expect the actual physical consumption of the brand experience, such as the overnight hotel accommodation, to make the strongest impression on the brand experience. When tourists are immersed in the experience, they may wish to share this with their friends through posting video, text and images to content sharing websites, and social networks. Mobile based systems like Foursquare allow tourists to tweet, share information, upload videos and other content, and encourage their friends to get involved in the tourist experience (e.g. a festival). Virtual reality has much potential to enhance the entertainment and educational value of the experience, as in the Futuroscope theme park in France where a real setting is enhanced with projection of futuristic animals, or the Foundation of the Hellenic World in Greece, where visitors can travel through the ancient city of Miletus (Guttentag 2010). Augmented reality (AR), where computer generated images are merged with real world view (Guttentag 2010), is also used effectively for tourism attractions. Tourists are also increasingly using blogs as online diaries, which can be distributed to friends and personal networks (Munar 2009). Smartphones and Wi-Fi make it very easy for tourists to post to online communities such as TripAdvisor or Wayn.com during their stay. A strong infl uence on the content disseminated through social media by the tourist will be the quality of the service experience.
Post-consumption brand experience
The brand experience lives on after the core consumption experience, when the tourist can upload video, images and text to various content sharing websites, coloured by the individual recollection of the experience. Online tourist networks and communities impact signifi cantly on the tourism brand experience, because of the considerable infl uence that online consumer review has on tourist decision making (Papathassis and Knolle 2011), and so positive reviews of the tourist experience are very desirable. Once the tourist has experienced the consumption of
Brand experience in the Internet age
the holiday experience, and if this has been positive, the tourist may be open to joining tourism destination/fi rm sponsored social network, such as a Facebook site. This then operates as a virtual community where the tourist can post content, and continue to interact with the tourism organization. Tourists may also take the opportunity to refl ect on their experience, once the trip is over, through online blogging. Again, all of these online conversations and inter-actions contribute towards consumer co-creation of the tourist brand experience (Muniz and O’Guinn 2001; McAlexander, Schouten and Koenig 2002; Prahalad and Ramaswamy 2004;
Brakus et al. 2009).
Conclusions
The Internet presents a major challenge to attempts to control tourism brand image (Munar 2009). But is there any point in the DMO or tourism fi rm attempting to exclusively control image? Tourism destinations and fi rms must engage with the newly empowered tourist, and respond to the desire and ability of the tourist to co-create the tourism brand experience through social media. This chapter has highlighted the importance for tourism fi rms and DMOs of being aware of the impact of social media on the tourism brand experience. The consumer co-creation of the experience effectively is the brand (Brakus et al. 2009), and the brand experience happens Figure 11.2 The Gathering: example of tourism brand experience creation through an Internet
platform.
The Gathering: Developing an integrated Brand Proposition for Destination Ireland in 2013 through the Internet
The Gathering is an Irish government initiative, in conjunction with the tourism support agencies, Tourism Ireland, and Fáilte Ireland. The intention of the initiative is to encourage some of the 70 million people living outside Ireland, claiming Irish ancestry, to visit their ancestral land, during 2013 (The Gathering. 2012). A distinctive aspect of this brand experience is the fostering of community involvement in Ireland, with local communities encouraged to arrange any type of ‘gathering’, which could be a clan gathering (e.g. meeting of the O’Connor clan), or class reunion. Apart from the core ‘gatherings’, a second strand is composed of festivals and events. Enterprises and community groups can register to get brand support through templates, and tourism images – and branding guidelines are used to support co-branding. Individuals and groups can create their own gatherings, through registering details on the website. The Gathering is using social media extensively, including Facebook, Linkedln and Twitter, to facilitate host community development and communication of activities, and online communications by potential visitor/visitors, essentially to develop the destination Ireland brand. A Global Community page on the website (http:/www.thegatheringireland.com) teases out the nature of being Irish, building on the community of the Irish diaspora, now able through a digital platform to express this identity. The website uses videos (one featuring the US talk-show host, Conan O’Brien), links, news, stories and thought pieces to generate a brand narrative. As the gatherings are taking place in 2013,tourists report on their experiences and positively promote the Irish brand to the world. Ireland as a destination will be depicted through the user generated content as local communities, potential visitors and visitors share their experiences with others through each of the consumption phases.
at pre-consumption, consumption and post-consumption stages. Tourism authorities must develop strategies to positively infl uence the infl uence of social media on this brand experience, at each stage. At the pre-consumption stage, social media provides a fi rst exposure to the tourism brand experience through UGC. Therefore, it is important that tourists are encouraged to upload to content sharing sites such as YouTube, and also to fi rm/destination sponsored social networking sites. Virtual tourism communities such as TripAdvisor are enormously infl uential in representing the fi rst exposure to the tourism fi rm brand experience for the consumer. The most effective way for the hotel or other tourism fi rm to get positive reviews on TripAdvisor is through service quality. Consistency between employee and customer understanding of the service brand, and commitment by managers to employee development is critical (De Chernatony and Segal-Horn 2003) as employees are at the critical interface with the customer, and it is vital to remember the critical role of tourism employees in driving positive eWOM.
DMOs and tourism entrepreneurs must facilitate the development of online communities through engaging with tourists on online blogs, discussion groups and social network groups, and incentivizing tourist participation – as these are seen to be critical in the consumer co-creation of the brand (Muniz and O’Guinn 2001; Prahalad and Ramaswamy 2004). The websites of the tourism fi rm and the DMO are also important in allowing the tourist to embrace the brand experience, particularly if enhanced by features such as a virtual tour (Hyun and Cai 2009).
The Internet presents the opportunity to present customized multi-component offerings to the tourist (Buhalis 2011). Employing rich multimedia in the fi rm or destination website can create a ‘telepresence’ for the tourist, and this can simulate the experience of interaction with tourism products and destinations (Buhalis and Law 2008). Intermediary websites (such as Expedia) are increasingly dominant as aggregators and portals, and so DMOs and tourism fi rms need to be very conscious of the effi cacy of their own corporate web presence. Similarly, at the consumption stage, when tourists are actively engaging with the physical brand experience, it can be of benefi t to encourage them to upload content, which shows how they are enjoying the experience.
Tourism communities offer the potential for tourism fi rms to better understand the needs and the motivations of tourists, therefore informing more consumer focused marketing (Buhalis and Law 2008). As yet, tourism fi rms and DMOs have been slow to engage with this potential (Hyun and Cai 2009). This is important because the visitor may have a vertical relationship, e.g.
not being loyal to an airline, but staying true to the destination (McKercher et al. 2011). Timing is also important for tourists contributing to online communities such as TripAdvisor – if the experience is good, tourists should be encouraged to share this knowledge through a community or social network, or blog – at the point of consumption. Virtual reality also can enhance the tourist brand experience consumption, particularly in education and heritage sites (Guttentag 2010).
In the post-consumption stage, the tourism brand experience lives on through the sharing of text, videos, images and other content by tourists in social media. Again, DMOs and tourism fi rms can infl uence this process by encouraging tourists to disseminate, and by promoting corporate sponsored social networking sites and blogs where customers can continue to engage with the brand through interaction with other tourists, and the fi rm. The ability to integrate positive eWOM with online advertising, particularly on third party managed sites, is also likely to have a signifi cant positive impact for the fi rm (Jones et al. 2009). There is a substantial benefi t to the tourism fi rm and to the DMO in harnessing the information available on the Internet from tourist enquiries, and the online chatter and comment in a multitude of Internet chatrooms and communities, to provide valuable market data (see Buhalis 2011). These market insights can be of immense value in informing modifi cation and redesign of the tourism offering, and helping to ensure that the tourism brand experience is compelling for the visitor.
Brand experience in the Internet age Above all, it is critical to remember that the individual tourist co-creates and forms a unique personalized brand experience (Prahalad and Ramaswamy 2004). It has been highlighted that stronger brands are created as a result of including both brand managers and consumers in the co-creation of the brand (Brown et al. 2003; Coupland et al. 2005). Maintaining quality customer experience and facilitating the consumer co-creation experience is critical (Prahalad and Ramaswamy 2004). Therefore, tourism authorities and enterprises should provide compelling and quality experiences, informed by the wealth of tourist market information on the Internet, and facilitate the tourist in co-creating compelling brand experiences through social media.
Initiatives such as ‘The Gathering’ (see Figure 11.2) highlight how by simply providing an idea, and a digital platform, consumers are facilitated to co-create, and communicate a compelling a tourism brand experience. More research is required on destination brand strategy using social media (Goldsmith and Tsiotsou 2012). While there has been attention in the literature to tourism branding at the individual enterprise, and destination level, and to visitor experience; there has been a marked lack of investigation of the impact of digital platforms on tourism branding and experience.
A challenge for academic research is to integrate examination of the tourism brand experience with tourist self-concept, and in particular, how tourists use social media to co-create the tourism experience. This requires an adjustment from the traditional destination management framework, with the DMO in control, creating and communicating a tourism experience, to a consumer driven paradigm. This will involve a multi-disciplinary lens from scholars, on destination management, marketing, branding, and digital marketing, to consumer psychology, self-image and consumer community.
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