Customer based brand equity for empowering Sri Lanka as a tourism destination: with special reference to tea tourism

Abstract

Tea tourism is one of the alternative forms of tourism which is being operated in the tea growing regions in the world. Sri Lanka also can benefit from adopting and promoting tea tourism. The main purpose of this study is to propose a practical model to empower Sri Lanka as a tea tourism destination. In this study, Keller’s constructs of the pyramid of brand equity, including brand salience, brand performance, brand imagery, brand judgments, brand feelings, and brand resonance, are investigated and their relationships with brand equity, as well as their effects on customer loyalty and satisfaction in Tea tourism in Sri Lanka are determined. The statistical population of the present study is all foreign visitors from tea estates based recreational sites in Sri Lanka. The data were collected by administering questionnaire. The sample consisted with 385 randomly selected individuals. The research hypotheses were tested through structural equation modeling and the final model was confirmed. The findings of the study revealed that only the relationships between brand salience and customer loyalty, brand imagery and brand performance towards brand equity were not significant, and all other relationships were significant. Also, fit indices obtained from the conceptual model indicates that model is valid in explaining the relationships among variables to empower Sri Lanka as a Tea Tourism destination. Therefore this proposed model emphasized how marketers should design and implement the effective marketing programs to empower Sri Lanka as a tea tourism destination. In this way, Sri Lanka can be positioned as one of the attractive and more competitive tea tourism destinations in the world which in turn could make a positive impact on foreign exchange, employment oportunities and other economic factors.