Brand, Identity and Reputation: Exploring, Creating New Realities ...

Beyond the Perfect Shot: An Exploratory Analysis of Golf Destinations Online Promotional Texts
Rosária Pereira, Management, Hospitality and Tourism School, University of the Algarve, Portugal
Antónia Correia, Faculty of Economics, University of the Algarve, Portugal
Ronaldo Schutz, Management, Hospitality and Tourism School, University of the Algarve, Portugal
Introduction
Over the last decade, information and communication technologies have contributed to the development of new tools
and services that facilitate global interaction between tourism players around the world. According to Mills & Law
(2004), the internet has changed tourism consumer behavior by providing direct access to a greater affluence of
information provided by tourism organizations, private enterprises and by other consumers. Most tourism organizations
(hotels, airlines, travels agencies and golf courses, among others) have embraced the internet as part of their
communications strategies hence this paper is focused on the analysis of promotional texts of golf course websites,
tourism and golf entity websites when promoting a region as a golf destination.
Purpose
This paper aims to explore to what extent golf tourism in the Algarve is promoted under the premises of a ‗glocal‘
strategy, by using specific characteristics of the region to elaborate its promotional narratives or by using a global
approach, common to other golf destinations. The study also uses promotional texts in golf related websites to verify
whether the traits used in human and brand personality models are used to promote golf destinations.
Conceptualization
Considering that a brand is the good name of a product, an organization or a place, ideally linked to its identity
(Kapferer, 2004) it can become a facilitator of an informed buying decision, or a ‗promise of value‘ (Kotler & Gertner,
2002; Van Gelder, 2003). As far as places are concerned, identity is constructed through historical, political, religious
and cultural discourses; through local knowledge, and influenced by managers, which establish and project a full set of
unique characteristics that will be the basis for differentiation, and are then disseminated by marketing strategies
through different communication channels, turning a place into an appealing destination.
By going through the process of collecting information, the consumer creates an image or a mental portrayal or
prototype (Alhemoud & Armstrong, 1996; Kotler, Haiden & Rein, 1993; Tapachi & Waryzak, 2000) of what the travel
experience might look like. Such an image is based on attributes, functional consequences (or expected benefits) and the
symbolic meanings or psychological characteristics that consumers associate with a specific place (Etcnher & Ritchie,
1991; 1993, 2003; Padgett & Allen, 1997; Tapachai & Waryszak, 2000). Consequently, it is necessary for marketers to
create a strong brand personality in travelers‘ minds to assign the destination a meaning that gives the customer
something to relate to. Brand personality has been defined as the ―set of human characteristics associated with a brand‖
(Aaker, 1997) ―that are projected from the self-images of consumers in an attempt to reinforce their own personalities‖
(Murase & Bojanic, 2004).
Therefore, destination brand personality appears as a wider concept which will have to include different dimensions, as
suggested by Pereira, Correia & Schutz (2010). For instance, human personality traits (HPT) which allow for the
personification of the brand (Aaker, 1997); destination image and visitor self image, as correlated constructs, expressed
by destination image descriptors (DID) which reflect the conceptualization of brand personality as part of the tourist‘s
self expression (Murase & Bojanic, 2004); and finally, the relational components of brand personality (RCBP) such as
functional, symbolic and experiential attributes that play a fundamental role in the establishment of relationships
between destination, brand and visitors while contributing to the differentiation of the brand (Hankinson, 2004).
Methodology
The research was based on the collection and comparative analysis of 45 promotional texts in websites of official
tourism entities and golf courses in the Algarve, and of 54 promotional texts in websites of golf courses and official
tourism entities worldwide, as shown in table 1. The latter corresponds to the 2009 best 40 golf courses in the world
according to Golf Magazine‘s (2010) ranking. A total of 99 websites were included in the study.
Table 1 here
As main analytical method, the software word smith was used to calculate the frequency of each adjective in the overall
text. Also, the percentage of each adjective in the overall number of web sites was calculated in order to acknowledge
the representativeness of each adjective in the total number of websites, for each category: ‗Worldwide‘ (common to
Algarve and other destinations), ‗Algarve only‘ and ‗Other destinations only‘. After a revision of the adjectives, the
ones with frequencies less than 5% were eliminated. A list of 129 adjectives remained. The websites relating to the
Algarve and to foreign destinations and golf courses were treated separately to allow a comparative analysis of the
terms. A contextualization of each adjective in the text was done in order to find which object/attribute of the
destination it was referred to.
The study considered three different dimensions of traits: 1) HPT included in the ‗Big-Five‘ model of personality
(Goldberg, 1992), as brand personality can be the personification of the brand or a ―set of human characteristics
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