Journal 2
Journal 2
Journal 2
https://www.emerald.com/insight/2514-9792.htm
in luxury hotels:
an impact-asymmetry analysis 451
c
Maja Seri Received 13 November 2019
Revised 27 March 2020
Department of Marketing and Market Research, Faculty of Economics, 25 May 2020
University of Valencia, Valencia, Spain, and Accepted 26 May 2020
Josip Mikulic
Department of Tourism, Faculty of Economics and Business,
University of Zagreb, Zagreb, Croatia and
Institute for Tourism, Zagreb, Croatia
Abstract
Purpose – This paper examines the development of customer-based brand equity through communication
consistency in a luxury hotel segment. Communication consistency is considered as a basic principle of the
integrated marketing communications (IMC) approach.
Design/methodology/approach – The empirical research was conducted among 223 guests during their
stay in five-star deluxe luxury hotels in a Mediterranean country. Data are analyzed through the PLS technique
and impact-asymmetry analysis.
Findings – Communication consistency is found to have a strong positive impact on all brand equity
dimensions, especially on brand trust, brand image and perceived quality. The impact-asymmetry analysis
further revealed negatively asymmetric relationships between communication consistency and six out of seven
brand equity dimensions, except for affective commitment.
Research limitations/implications – Some restrictions related to the measurement scales should be
mitigated in future research.
Practical implications – Communication consistency is confirmed as a core management practice in luxury
hotel business. Marketing professionals operating in this industry are therefore confronted with increasing
challenges of efficient management of IMC.
Originality/value – This work addresses several research calls from the most recent marketing and
hospitality literature. The analysis of the impact of communication consistency has extended our knowledge on
the potential of IMC in creation of a strong brand. Obtained insights into the shape of the relationship between
communication consistency and seven different brand equity dimensions help to better understand the process
of brand equity building in a luxury hotel setting.
Keywords Communication consistency, Integrated marketing communications (IMC), Brand equity, Luxury
hotels, PLS, Impact-asymmetry analysis
Paper type Research paper
Introduction
Brand equity has been confirmed as a major topic of interest in the most recent hospitality
c et al., 2018). The concept refers to an extra value that
studies (Liu et al., 2017; Seri
consumers assign to a product through its brand (Pappu et al., 2006). Three main methods
have been identified to build brand equity (Keller, 2003): a) the selection of brand elements,
such as symbol, logo and packaging; b) marketing strategies related to product, price, place
and promotion; and c) integrated marketing communications (IMC), understood as a
coordination of advertising, event marketing, promotions and other communication tools. Journal of Hospitality and Tourism
Insights
Vol. 3 No. 4, 2020
pp. 451-468
This work was funded by the project DESTBRAND UIP-2014-09-7005 of the Croatian Science © Emerald Publishing Limited
2514-9792
Foundation and University of Valencia - UVEG, Spain, grant number UV-INV_EPDI16-383122. DOI 10.1108/JHTI-11-2019-0119
JHTI The present study focuses on how the last of the three methods, that is, the IMC approach,
3,4 can influence the process of brand equity creation, as integration in marketing communications
is found to be critical in the relationship marketing paradigm (Shin et al., 2015), which is
fundamental for building a strong brand (Keller, 2009). More specifically, the focus will be on
the role of communication consistency, which is considered a basic principle of IMC (Lee and
c et al., 2015). Communication consistency embraces both tactical consistency
Park, 2007; Seri
(i.e. common visual, verbal and sound elements of the message) and strategic consistency (i.e.
452 common brand meaning and content on a number of different means of communication)
(Navarro et al., 2010).
The impact of communication consistency is examined from the consumer perspective, as
consumer perception of marketing communications is a continuing concern in the latest
marketing literature (e.g. Batra and Keller, 2016; Butkouskaya et al., 2020). In the eyes of
consumers, the peculiarity of a brand is strongly influenced by communication (Reid et al.,
2005). This is of particular concern for marketers, who need to track their communication
activities and observe how they affect their target (Keller, 2003).
The objective of this paper is to study the effects of communication consistency on brand
equity in a specific environment, that is, luxury hotel setting. The luxury hotel context has
been selected because of its particular attention toward consumers’ perceptions before and
during their experience with the hotel services. Accordingly, perception of communication
consistency and brand equity components are approached from the travelers’ perspective,
owing to their high involvement in the luxury segment (Walls et al., 2011). Moreover, the most
recent literature on luxury service consumption stresses the need for understanding consumer
behavior and consumer’s connection with the brand in different hospitality luxury contexts,
such as hotels (Liu et al., 2017; Peng and Chen, 2019) and restaurants (Chen and Peng, 2018).
Some studies have also argued the importance of studying communication practices in this
type of business. For example, Kang et al. (2016) argued that an effective internal marketing
communication campaign might encourage customer orientation of the employees at service
encounters at luxury hotels. In their study on the impact of consumer-based brand equity
dimensions in luxury hotels, Liu et al. (2017) suggested that IMC should lead to a greater brand
performance. However, much needs to be done to understand the effectiveness of the IMC
approach from the consumers’ rather than from the firm’s point of view and by providing
empirical evidence, rather than theory-based assumptions (Seri c et al., 2015).
The empirical study is set in a Mediterranean country that is currently experiencing
considerable tourism growth, thus emphasizing the need to study perceptions of tourists who
use tourism amenities, particularly luxury hotels. For the purpose of this study, luxury hotels
are defined as deluxe, five-star hotels.
This study employs the partial least squares (PLS) method to test the hypotheses
proposed in the research model. In addition, to assess the effects of both low and high levels of
communication consistency, impact-asymmetry analysis (IAA) is performed, as this
technique facilitates detection of potentially significant level effects in the relationships
between communication consistency and brand equity dimensions.
This work addresses several research calls from the recent marketing and hospitality
literature. Firstly, it attempts to answer the research call for new studies on drivers of brand
equity in hotel companies (Huang and Cai, 2015). In particular, it focuses on luxury hotel
segment, where the need for new contributions on consumer-based brand equity has been
underlined (Liu et al., 2017). In addition, the importance of studying IMC for luxury brands
has been emphasized (Karmark et al., 2016), since these brands tend to show remarkable
marketing practices throughout differentiation strategies and have important implications
for brand managers (Beverland and Luxton, 2005). Secondly, it seeks to provide empirical
evidence for the impact of IMC on brand equity dimensions, as suggested by Luxton et al.
(2017). Thirdly, following recommendations for future research from the most recent studies
(e.g. Bruhn and Schnebelen, 2017; Butkouskaya et al., 2020), it supports a customer-oriented Building brand
approach to IMC through an empirical exploration. equity in
luxury hotels
Conceptual framework and research hypotheses
Communication consistency
The idea of marketing communication integration and consistency was born in 1990s. Phelps
and Johnson (1996) discussed three main elements of the IMC paradigm that were initially 453
developed by Nowak and Phelps (1994), that is, one voice, coordination and integration. One
voice perspective suggests that integration consists of maintaining consistency in brand
image, positioning and message through different marketing communication tools such as
advertising, sponsorship, direct marketing, public relations, among others. The integration
dimension is focused on one specific tool – advertising, which seeks to build a strong brand
image, thus influencing consumer behavior. Other marketing communication tools are used
to create necessary synergies with advertising. Finally, coordination stands for integration of
communication strategies and campaigns developed by advertising agencies hired by
organizations and organizations themselves (Phelps and Johnson, 1996).
Lee and Park (2007) developed the “unified communications for consistent message and
image” dimension of IMC, which addresses a single positioning of a brand through message
consistency. These authors argued that creating and maintaining a consistent brand image
should be one of the key goals of the IMC approach. Batra and Keller (2016) have recently
discussed online and offline communication synergies in the proposed “top-down”
communications optimization model, which helps marketers understand whether they
managed to completely integrate their marketing communication tools.
Despite its increased relevance in marketing literature, the concept of communication
consistency has been rather neglected in the hotel industry. A recent study shows that new
information and communication technologies (ICTs) drive consistency in marketing
communication messages and that this relationship is moderated by hotel location (Seri c
et al., 2016). However, to the best of the authors’ knowledge, no study addressed the concept of
communication consistency in the luxury hotel context exclusively. Studying marketing
communications perceptions among consumers of this segment is of a particular importance,
owing to the fact that luxury business is both consumer-focused and consumer-centric. This
orientation matches the IMC modus operandi, which encourages firms to learn more about
consumers’ behaviors and habits (consumer-focused) and strives to meet consumers’
expectations and satisfy their needs by active listening (consumer-centric) (Schultz, 2006).
457
Figure 1.
Research model
Research method
In order to test all formulated research hypotheses, an empirical study was conducted among
223 guests who stayed in five-star deluxe hotel properties in a Mediterranean country.
Initially, all luxury hotels of the country were invited to participate in this study (N 5 27).
Among them, managers of 12 hotels agreed, with the response rate of 44.44%, allowing 20
guests to be interviewed in each hotel. Once the permission from managers was received,
guests were approached in hotel lobbies. Respondents were selected according to their
availability to participate in the research and time they were willing to dedicate to answer
questions. The sample profile is presented in Table 1.
We used a structured questionnaire to collect data. The questionnaire was mainly
administered by one of the authors through personal interviews with guests. Regarding the
employed measurement scales, we used the adapted scale of Lee and Park (2007) to assess
communication consistency. Hotel guests were asked to state to what extent they perceived
message consistency on different communication tools and channels, such as advertising,
hotel website, promotional material and word of mouth, and to what degree hotel managed to
insure a consistent brand image through them. To operationalize seven brand equity
dimensions, this study used adapted versions of the scales of Kim and Kim (2005) for brand
image, perceived quality, brand loyalty and brand satisfaction and of Kim et al. (2008),
Hsu et al. (2012) and Mattila (2006) for brand awareness, brand trust and affective brand
commitment, respectively. The brand image scale measured aspects such as luxurious,
suitable for high class, high level of service, feeling special, differentiated image, while
perceived quality measured hotel attractiveness, staff appearance and good manners,
treatment as a special customer, anticipation of specific needs and effective complaint
handling, among others. Brand loyalty was assessed through intention to return, intention to
recommend and nonintention to change. Brand satisfaction was measured through different
levels of satisfaction and delight, while for hotel brand awareness, recall and recognition were
considered. Finally, brand trust was operationalized through the degree of hotel guest
confidence in the brand’s management and perception of the extent to which the hotel brand
knows how to do business, whereas affective brand commitment was measured through the
strength of commitment to the relationship with the hotel brand, the level of emotional
attachment to the hotel brand and the extent to which the relationship with the hotel brand
enhances personal meaning. Most of these scales have been employed in studies conducted in
JHTI Hotel guests N 5 223 %
3,4
Gender
Male 124 55.6
Female 99 44.4
Age
458 18–25 3 1.3
26–35 41 18.4
36–45 76 34.1
46–55 56 25.1
56–65 34 15.2
>65 13 5.9
Education
Primary education 1 0.4
Secondary education 52 23.3
Higher education 118 53.0
Postgraduate education 52 23.3
Income
Without salary 9 4.0
>1,000 euros 20 9.0
1,000–3,000 euros 118 52.9
<3,000 euros 76 34.1
Motive
Vacations 190 85.2
Table 1. Business 27 12.1
Sample profile Other 6 2.7
upscale and luxury hotel contexts and are therefore considered as an appropriate
measurement tool for this study. All items were measured with a five-point Likert scale.
perceived quality, as it loaded highly with a different construct, that is, brand image. Finally,
we examined the HTMT, which suggests that the results confirming hypothesized structural
paths are real, instead of being just the results of statistical discrepancies (Hair et al., 2017). As
all the obtained values were below the threshold of 0.9, discriminant validity has been
corroborated (see Table 3).
Estimation of the causal model
After checking the quality of the measurement tool, we estimated our structural model on the
basis of 5,000 bootstrapping runs. For the relative prediction power of the model we observed
R squared (R2), f squared (f2) and Q squared (Q2) indices. All R2 values satisfied the threshold
of 0.10 (Falk and Miller, 1992). The f2 effects ranged from 0.19 to 0.72, thus showing medium
and large predictive relevance of the endogenous construct. More specifically, moderate
effects are found of communication consistency on brand awareness and affective brand
commitment, while the effects on all the other variables of the model were strong, as were
greater than 0.35 (Hair et al., 2017). Positive values came out from the blindfolding cross-
JHTI validation method (Chin, 1998). These results suggest that our hypotheses will have good
3,4 prediction power (see Table 4).
Results presented in Table 4 show that all hypotheses are confirmed. We found that
communication consistency impacts in a positive and significant way all brand equity
elements, namely: a) awareness (β 5 0.40, p < 0.01; H1); b) image (β 5 0.62, p < 0.01; H2); c)
perceived quality (β 5 0.61, p < 0.01; H3); d) loyalty (β 5 0.59, p < 0.01; H4); e) satisfaction
(β 5 0.58, p < 0.01; H5); f) trust (β 5 0.65, p < 0.01; H6); and g) affective commitment (β 5 0.46,
460 p < 0.01; H7).
Impact-asymmetry analysis
After examining the effects of communication consistency on the individual brand equity
dimensions, we conducted an IAA to obtain a more detailed picture of the shape of examined
relationships. In particular, the goal of IAA is to individually assess the effects of low levels of
communication consistency, on one hand, and high levels of communication consistency, on
the other hand. Originally, IAA has been introduced as a tool for detecting asymmetric effects
in customer satisfaction formation (Mikulic and Prebezac, 2008). Basically, the technique is an
extension of the penalty reward contrast analysis (PRCA; Brandt, 1987) which uses multiple
regression analysis with binary-coded dummy variables as regressors. Both PRCA and IAA
have also been applied to study asymmetric effects of constructs, which are modeled as latent
variables (e.g. F€
uller and Matzler, 2008; Mikulic et al., 2015).
To prepare the data for the IAA, in a first step latent variable scores were calculated for all
examined constructs in this study. Since this analysis seeks to assess potential asymmetries
Factors Mean SD F1 F2 F3 F4 F5 F6 F7 F8
F1: Communication consistency 4.08 0.94 0.93 0.70 0.68 0.47 0.64 0.74 0.70 0.50
F2: Brand image 4.23 0.65 0.61 0.74 0.71 0.49 0.70 0.73 0.77 0.62
F3: Brand loyalty 4.18 0.94 0.58 0.62 0.86 0.43 0.85 0.82 0.75 0.67
F4: Brand awareness 3.53 1.08 0.40 0.43 0.38 0.84 0.29 0.36 0.38 0.56
F5: Brand satisfaction 4.42 0.81 0.57 0.64 0.76 0.27 0.97 0.76 0.75 0.48
F6: Brand trust 4.35 0.81 0.65 0.66 0.71 0.32 0.70 0.95 0.85 0.59
Table 3. F7: Perceived quality 4.37 0.64 0.61 0.69 0.65 0.33 0.69 0.77 0.78 0.54
Measurement scales: F8: Affective brand commitment 3.22 1.14 0.45 0.56 0.58 0.50 0.45 0.53 0.49 0.92
mean values and Note(s): SD 5 Standard Deviation; diagonal italics data are the square root of AVE 5 Average variance
discriminant validity extracted; under the diagonal data are estimated correlations. Above the diagonal data are HTMT values
Hypotheses Confirmation β t
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Corresponding author
c can be contacted at: maja.seric@uv.es
Maja Seri
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