Guest-based hotel equity: scale development and validation

What is it about?

The findings of this study provide hotel managers with a new tool to use in assessing the experiential value of the hotel brand equity, other than conventional hotel awareness and brand image. Further, using the multidimensional construct of perceived value provides hotel managers with more insights into what aspects of hotel brand equity they should focus on to influence the behavioral intentions of their guests.

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Why is it important?

The importance of this research is highlighted in several points. First, it develops and empirically validates a new scale to measure customer-based brand equity in the hotel context, that is, GBHE. Second, it incorporates the customer perceived value of hotels not as a unidimensional construct that is concerned only with cost, but as a multi-dimensional construct which includes in the GBHE scale dimensions that are both cognitive (i.e. of price and quality) and affective (i.e. of self-gratification, aesthetics, prestige, transaction and hedonism) in addition to its traditional dimensions (i.e. brand awareness and brand image). Third, it assesses the predictive power and relative importance of the GBHE dimensions for behavioral intentions (i.e. loyalty to hotels). Finally, no research has been done so far on the brand equity of hotels in the United Arab Emirates (UAE), although it is considered a fertile soil for tourism in the Arabian region.

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