Construction Process of a Destination Image: Applying the “Schemas” Concept

Destination image is one of the most popular topics in tourism. The concept of image is a quite losing construction since there is a huge diversity of definitions and it incorporates both concrete and abstract content not clearly rooted on fundamental theories of psychology. The current methods impose a structure such as multi-attribute rating of some destinations, in many cases he/she hardly ever had considered and using attributes not relevant to them. There are particularly two publications with a relatively high number of citations (in January 2017): Echtner and Ritchie (1993) with 1871, and Baloglu and McCleary (1999), quoted 2805 times. These authors and probably many of their followers propose lists of attributes to measure image. In the case of the first authors, that set of attributes was designed aiming to help clarify the dichotomy in destination characteristics: between functional/psychological components and between holistic/attributes dimensions. Specifically the holistic dimension and the characteristics considered unique, as opposed to the common indexed in attributes lists, deserve further attention in those articles.

Citation:

Pedro Quelhas Brito and Zaíla Oliveira (2017) ,"Construction Process of a Destination Image: Applying the “Schemas” Concept ", in LA - Latin American Advances in Consumer Research Volume 4, eds. Enrique P. Becerra, Ravindra Chitturi, and Maria Cecilia Henriquez Daza and Juan Carlos Londoño Roldan, Duluth, MN : Association for Consumer Research, Pages: 138-139.