Entrepreneurship und Tourismus

1. Introduction

“Branding” is a rather common strategy in marketing consumer goods. Brands are helpful or necessary in order to distinguish between more or less identical (homogeneous in function) products. Branding wants consumers to build up preferences for a certain brand, which will lead to repeated purchases and consumer loyalty.

Consumers in tourism are faced with a multitude of options of rather complex combinations of products and services (Pechlaner et al., 2007, p. 359). Complexity has an influence on what decision strategies are applied (e.g. Swait & Adamovicz, 2001) in an often dynamic process of judgement and decision-making (for an overview on theories see Sirakaya & Woodside, 2005). For the consumer, generally, relying on brands reduces the complexity in the decision process and thus makes life easier. Brands in tourism (e.g. destinations) – as with fast-moving consumer goods – are functionally substitutable but differentiated by marketing communication (‘branding’) (see Foxall, 1999, for FMCGs).

The strategy of branding has been widely adopted in tourism destination marketing (Pechlaner et al., 2007; Swarbrooke & Horner, 2007, p. 164). As with consumer goods, the aim i...