Juergen Gnoth

How to Develop Successful Hospitality Innovation

A survey of 184 German hoteliers identified nine factors that promote successful service innovations. The study found that the nature of the innovation is far less important than the effectiveness of a hotel’s human resources management and employee training, empowerment, and commitment to the service. Ensuring that the innovation is matched to the targeted market is important, of course, but such factors as effective marketing communication and public relations do not seem to support innovations’ success. Also important is the tangible nature of the service, but having innovative technology was not a significant factor in new-service development for these hoteliers.

Sense of Place The Importance for Destination Branding

Given that brand meanings are socially constructed and culturally dependent, we advocate that a destination branding strategy should begin by understanding what constitutes sense of place as experienced by local residents. The constructs of time, ancestry, landscape, and community were identified as determinants for the sense of place by inhabitants of the Chatham Islands of New Zealand. These constructs comprise meanings that influence the habitus and define sense of place. This article contributes to our understanding of place by providing a sense of place model to support scholarship in destination and place branding. Destination branding activity ought to be significantly influenced by an in-depth appreciation of the sense of place for those whose place it is. Our emergent model emphasizes the importance of understanding sense of place and positioning the people of the place at the centre of a branding strategy for the development of an effective destination brand.

Identifying determinants of success in development of new high‐contact services

Purpose – The purpose of this study is to gain insight into factors that contribute to the success in high contact new service development (NSD) projects.Design/methodology/approach – Data were collected via questionnaires from hospitality managers knowledgeable about NSD in their organization (sample size =183; response rate 38.1 percent). Discriminant analysis was used to identify the factors that are responsible for successful high contact NSD projects in the hospitality industry.Findings – Research results indicate that seven factors play a distinctive role in the outcome of high contact NSD: market attractiveness, strategic human resource management, market responsiveness, empowerment, training of employees, employee commitment and marketing synergy.Research limitations/implications – This study was conducted in only one industry (hospitality) and one country (Germany) and included only the views of managers.Practical implications – This study outlines the importance of human resource management fact...

Temporal Construal in Advertising

In two experiments, we study how the temporal orientation of consumers (i.e., future-oriented or present-oriented), temporal construal (distant future, near future), and product attribute importance (primary, secondary) influence advertisement evaluations. Data suggest that future-oriented consumers react most favorably to ads that feature a product to be released in the distant future and that highlight primary product attributes. In contrast, present-oriented consumers prefer near-future ads that highlight secondary product attributes. Study 2 shows that consumer attitudes are mediated by perceptions of attribute diagnosticity (i.e., the perceived usefulness of the attribute information). Together, these experiments shed light on how individual differences, such as temporal orientation, offer valuable insights into temporal construal effects in advertising.

The structure of destination brands: leveraging values

This theoretical contribution details how a destinations capital is comprised of the values and meanings as expressed in the cultural, social, natural, and economic dimensions of peoples lives. Unlike in product brands, these values and meanings form a living and constantly evolving relational system existing among people. On this basis, selection criteria for the functional, experiential, and symbolic dimensions of destination brands are developed. The final model is designed to link the performance of the brand to its capital so that brand development becomes an integral part of sustainable destination management that can be appreciated by tourism operators. The major threat to destination brands is the disregard of the effects of aggregation and time in the commoditization of destination values.

Methodological issues in using Kahle's list of values scale for Japanese tourism behaviour:

The literature clearly provides support and empirical evidence linking personal values and consumption, and acknowledges cross-cultural differences in these values. Personal values have been shown to be efficient, measurable sets of variables that are less numerous, more centrally held and more closely related to motivations than demographic and psychographic measures. The list of values (LOV) is a widely used scale for the measurement of values in a variety of consumer behaviour contexts. It has been used for the purposes of cross-cultural comparison and in tourism behaviour research. Kahle has suggested the instrument is a viable candidate as a widely accepted measure for cross-cultural comparison of values. This paper examines the reliability and validity of the LOV in the context of Japanese tourism behaviour. Results suggest several problems with the scale in this context, and the paper discusses some philosophical and methodological issues in cross-cultural values research in tourism.

Visual Rhetoric and Ethics in Marketing of Destinations

The purpose of this article is to discuss the visual rhetoric of advertising in the marketing of destinations and place branding. In particular, it considers the ways in which advertisements create and reinforce meanings. Attention is also given to the ethics of representing people and places. The article provides an interdisciplinary conceptual review and uses a mixed methods approach to analyze the 100% Pure New Zealand advertising campaign. The contribution of this article is to enhance the discussion about ethics in representing places, communities, people, and their culture in destination marketing and in place brand communications.

Japanese Tourism Values A Means–End Investigation

This study evaluates the research method of means–end in a cross-cultural research context in order to understand Japanese tourists’ values that drive travel choices in New Zealand. It contributes an extensive critique of means–end analysis and its advantages over quantitative research methods in cross-cultural research. Its theoretical contribution comes in the form of a set of values or travel motivators, including a number of culturally motivated values that reveal unique insights into Japanese travel experiences. The article argues that meaningful values research must consider not only those values that are commonly understood across cultures but also those that are particular to the culture of interest, in order to understand what drives perception and satisfaction relevant for destination management and marketing. The data can be used to address a number of practical issues facing tourism practitioners such as segmenting the Japanese market, positioning tourism offerings within this market, and developing communication strategies.

Localizing Cultural Values on Tourism Destination Websites: The Effects on Users’ Willingness to Travel and Destination Image

The present study contributes to the current localization literature by revealing the effects of localizing cultural values on tourism destination websites on users’ destination image and willingness to travel. Reporting on two tests, the first is an analysis of the depiction of cultural values on 48 New Zealand, 36 Indian, and 46 Chinese destination sites. Results indicate significant differences in the cultural values exposed among the three countries. The second study reports on an experiment requiring 400 New Zealand participants to visit four versions of a fictitious experimental destination website. Commensurate with motivations for holiday tourism, results indicate that the depiction of incongruent cultural values to a target audience on destination websites generates a more positive destination image and greater willingness to travel, contradicting the current localization literature. Finally, managerial implications are also discussed.

Advances in tourism marketing research: introduction to a special issue on consumer behavior in tourism destinations

Purpose – The purpose of this editorial is to introduce the reader to six articles related to consumer behavior in tourism destinations.Design/methodology/approach – The paper introduces the papers in this special issue.Findings – Tourists are part of the tourism production process. They engage with supply networks and interact with destinations.Originality/value – The paper provides an introduction to six contributions that are particularly relevant for understanding and managing the content of the interaction between the network nodes, in particular business‐to‐consumer relationships.