National Forest Park Brand Personality And Self-image Congruity On Travel Intentions

At present, forest park tourism is developing rapid, and the market competition has gradually turned from the product, the price to the brand. While, most of forest parks just own the products but the brand, and still stay in the initial stage that the weak brand competitiveness and the brand values. So, building the brand personality to improve the brand’s value is great choice for the forest park managers. However, the systematic research on brand was just begun, and the most achievements mainly focused on the brand awareness and the theoretical research on brand image planning.Besides, factors influencing tourist be heavier have been a focal point in tourism research for decades. Efforts to unveil the determinants that shaped travel behavior stem not only from pure academic interest, but from practical business considerations. The past research on the subject of travel behavior put emphasis on behavior aspect or satisfaction, there is little research discuss the effect of psychological aspect on purchase decisions. Some foreign research verify that the effect of self-concept congruence on product preference, brand preference, and purchase intension. They also extend their research to the area of traveling and discuss how the self-image congruity affects post travel satisfaction, pre-travel purchase intension, or purchase possibility. Destination personality, self-concept, and congruence between self-concept and destination personality are among the fact are that are believed to influence tourist behavior.Destination personality can be defined as "the set of human characteristics associated to a tourism destination" it is a multidimensional construct. The theory of self-congruity can describe and predict the customer behavior. With adoption of this theory, a positive effect on the customer-based brand equity can be established. In addition, positive brand equity will lead to the promotion of customer travel intention. Base on this, this researcher constructs a conceptual model of "destination, self-congruity and travel intention "to investigate whether the personality revealed from the travel destination, as well as customer self-congruity will affect the travel intention of the customer to such destination. Further to clarify the mediating role of the customer-based brand equity in the relationships. The research launches a questionnaire to the visitors of Zhangjiajie National Forest Park, and receives a total of462valid questionnaires. After reviewed references and relevant theories, an analysis of conceptual framework and structural equation model is carried out. The results indicate that both destination personality and self-congruity will affect the travel intention of the customers toward such destination. In the effect process, the mediating effect of the customer-based brand equity cannot be ignored as well.The study serves as a practical reference for the forest pork managers who manage to increase revenue with souvenir sales. When the operators would like to market their forest pork travel destination, they can aggressively and positively reveal the destination’s unique characteristics of personality, which lead to the brand leverage of the travel destination, and advance the customer-based brand equity. The intention of the customers to visit such destination repeatedly will increase as a result.