VISITORS’ DESTINATION BRAND ENGAGEMENT’S EFFECT ON CO-CREATION: An empirical study

The emergence and rise of technology, including social media and online brand communities, have revolutionized consumer-brand interactions, thereby impacting consumer brand engagement and its outcomes. However, though social media-based brand engagement has developed into a key area of interest for brand managers, insight into its tourism-based dynamics and applications remains limited, particularly in the context of destination brands. To address this gap, we develop a model that explores the relationships between visitors’ destination brand engagement and its key antecedents/consequences. The findings suggest a positive effect of social media involvement and brand identification on visitors’ brand engagement, thus extending current literature-based acumen. Second, visitors’ destination brand engagement was found to positively affect the development of destination brand co-creation and loyalty, thus warranting engagement’s pivotal role in managing tourism brands. Third, we ascertain destination brand loyalty’s favorable impact on brand co-creation, warranting engagement’s and co-creation’s importance on brand managers’ strategic agenda. Overall, by furthering understanding of the role of consumers’ social media involvement in driving their destination brand identification, engagement and co-creation, our findings benefit destination branding organizations by helping to drive improved destination brand performance.