Destinations are considered as brands. It is important for destinations''
managers to build their own brands due to its influence on intention to visit.
Therefore at the destination level, marketing communications should be able
to focus on forming brand knowledge to promote and encourage its potential
visitors.
For the last decade, there has been tremendous growth in Chinese tourism
demand. The number of Chinese outbound tourists has increased to
approximately 110 million as of December of 2014. At the same period, the
number of Chinese visitors to Korea and Jeju was recorded at 6 million and
2.9 million respectively. This growth has considerably attributed to Chinese
tourism market in Jeju.
Accordingly, it is necessary to study empirically on marketing
communication effect especially to potential Chinese visitors, their brand
knowledge as well as intention to visit Jeju. It can also be very meaningful
to confirm empirically their structural relationships due to little research
regarding these variables to potential Chinese visitors.
This study is to mainly examine the structural relationships among
destination marketing communications, brand knowledge along with those
effect and role, and intention to visit to confirm causal relationship. Other
main purpose on this study is to conduct empirically through exploratory as
well as confirmatory analysis after measuring brand knowledge by
multi-attribute approach. Theoretically this study is to suggest that
destination image should be measured by not single but multi-attribute like
cognitive and affective image for its exact measurement.
This study adopted reference study through literature review, practitioners''
interview, deductive and quantitative approaches, empirical study as the
research method. For this research, there has been frequency analysis for
demographic characteristics, exploratory and confirmatory factor analysis with
corelation analysis, regression analysis for mediating effect, and structural
equation modeling to confirm the causal relationships.
The main survey for this study has been conducted by man-to-man
interview with probing as well as self-administered questionnaire survey
method in Shanghai China from October 13 to October 17 in 2015 after its
pilot test in Jeju. Data used for final analysis was collected from potential
visitors. 350 questionnaires were distributed randomly. Finally, 266 were used
except some questionnaires with missing marking, questionnaires with
respondents experienced in Jeju from the analysis.
The findings showed that research model was reliable and valid through
exploratory and confirmatory factor analysis. CFA model fit also indicated
indices acceptable. The linear and multiple regression analyses suggested that
there was significant in mediating effect of brand knowledge with marketing
communications and intention to visit. The result of proposed model analysis
through structural equation modeling showed that partially causal relationship
between marketing communications and brand knowledge, causal relationship
between marketing communications and intention to visit, partially causal
relationship between brand knowledge and intention to visit.
Theoretically, the final results implied that brand image is considered
multi-attribute when measuring brand knowledge so that cognitive image and
affective image can be reflected in the context of unique roles and
characteristics respectively. Managerially, there are some implications as
follows: Firstly, indicated that marketing strategy should reflect its means
according to influential factors out of marketing communications on brand
knowledge. Secondly implied that exposure through advertising and PR
regarding Jeju has been influencing potential Chinese intention to visit.
Especially, advertising is significantly associated affective image as well.
Thirdly, relationship between brand knowledge and intention to visit showed
that both cognitive and affective image formations are critical to visit intention.
There are some limitations in this study. Firstly, The result is limited to
generalize for Chinese due to the survey conducted only in Shanghai.
Secondly, there can also be some limitations in choosing words and
conveying those meaning of measuring items due to their translation Korean
into Chinese. Thirdly, advertising and PR only were used as marketing
communications components except sales promotion, personal selling and so
on due to characteristics of limited destination marketing communication.
For further studies on potential Chinese visitors, it is necessary to enlarge
its survey cities, to consider other variables such as word-of-mouth,
marketing PR. Hopefully, there should be longitudinal studies due to essentials
to follow up the global environmental changes.