The Effects Of Boutique Hotel Brand Association On Customers’ Behavioral Intention

With a rapid development of the Experience Economy, people’s demands tend to be diversified and personalized. As a result, boutique hotels, serve target markets with differentiated products and unique customer experience, came into being. Because of excellent performances and market responses, boutique hotels are viewed as a positive hotel innovation. While, there existed a pan-boutique phenomenon which challenged the healthy development of boutique hotel. Meantime, competitions among hospitality industry have been focused on branding. To build unique brand assosications as to improve hotels brand value is significantly important to boutique hotels.This study aims to explore the relaitionships among brand association, brand attitude and customer behavioral intention under a background of boutique hotels. Firsty, literature reviews present related research results of boutique hotel, brand association, brand attitude and customer behavioral intention. A conceptural study model is proposed. Secondly, this study applies9semi-structured interviews with hotel executives, professors and customers to gain a deeper understanding of boutique hotel’s conception and perceptual characateristics. Research hypotheses are raised by combining literature review and interview’s output. Thirdly, this study uses customer questionnaires to gather datas which are then calculated by SPSS and AMOS for futher analysis. Fourthly, all research hypotheses are testified. Major conclusions include:①Boutique hotel’s brand association is structured by5factors, service experience association, cultrural experience association, personal identify association, social identify association and quality guarantee association.②Service experience association, cultrural experience association and social identify association can positively effect cognitive brand attitude and affective brand attitude both, personal identify association effects affective brand attitude positively while quality guarantee association can only effect cognitive brand attitude.③There are no directly positive effect between service experience association, cultrural experience association, social identify association and quality guarantee association and customer behavioral intention, they effect behavioral intention mainly through brand attitude, which is testified as a mediating variable in this study. Personal identify association can directly effect customer behavioral intention.④There are no differences among different customer groups divided by gender, education level and purchasing experience.While, customers from different age, profession and income leves appear to have diffirent acknowledge of boutique hotels’brand association, brand attitude and customer behavioral intention. Finally, this study propose3main recommendations on boutique hotels’management and operation:focus on core products and create a unique consumer experience; select target markets as to enhance customer value recognition; initiate marketing strategies to cultivate positive brand attitude.