While insight into consumer brand engagement, experience, and identification is rapidly developing, little remains known regarding the association of these, and related, concepts, as therefore explored in this article. Drawing on social identity theory and service-dominant-logic, this study develops and tests a model that explores the effect of customers' brand credibility, -value congruence, and -experience on their brand identification, and its subsequent effect on their brand advocacy, -attachment, and -loyalty. We also examine the potentially moderating role of consumers' engagement in affecting these relationships. To explore these issues, we collected tourist-based survey data. To analyze the data, we used confirmatory factor analysis, followed by structural equation modeling. The findings reveal that brand value congruence, credibility, and experience exercise significant positive effects on customers' brand identification, which, in turn, impact their brand advocacy, attachment, and loyalty. Further, brand engagement is shown to moderate the association of these factors. We conclude by outlining key theoretical/practical implications that arise from this research.
The tourism and hospitality industry has been deeply disrupted by the COVID-19 pandemic since its inception in December 2019. Many tourists are too anxious to travel. Thus, understanding how travel constraints and perceived travel risk influence travel intention is crucial for many destinations in their post-crisis recovery. Drawing upon 357 Malaysian respondents, this study finds that structural constraints initiate tourists' negotiation process for travel decisions, which is inconsistent with the original Leisure Constraints Model. Nevertheless, it is reaffirmed that intrapersonal constraints remain the centrality of the negotiation process as they mediate the relationship between structural constraints, perceived travel risk and travel intention. These findings provide some theoretical contributions with regard to the Leisure Constraints Model and perceived travel risk in the context of the COVID-19. Based on the theoretical contributions, this study also sheds light on tourism revival from a practical perspective. Tourism authorities, destination marketing organizations, and business operators are suggested to take measures to restore tourists' confidence toward travel by reducing structural constraints and mitigating tourists' risk perception in a cooperative manner.
In the midst of the coronavirus pandemic, this article endeavors to offer expeditious insights into the impact of the global humanitarian crisis on the tourism industry from a consumer behavior perspective. To do so, this article employs the theory of crowding as an overarching theoretical lens, the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) as a context to represent a global humanitarian crisis, and the rapid review approach as a method to source maiden evidence. In doing so, this article sheds light on instances of undercrowding (undertourism) and overcrowding (overtourism) in tourism as a result of COVID-19, with interpretations enriched by agency theory and reactance theory-thereby resulting in the emergence of a new theory called the agency and reactance theory of crowding. The article concludes with pragmatic implications in light of the global humanitarian crisis.