Tourist Buyer Behavior at Heritage Sights: Is It Interesting to Be a Star ?

Christine Petr (1)

1 CREM - Centre de recherche en économie et management

This article presents an analysis of the impact of
corporate fame on buyer behavior. Thanks to a comparison of intentions to buy a product when the brand is highly familiar versus less familiar, the objective is to verify if strong brand awareness could have a negative impact on
buyer behavior. Regarding tourists buyer behavior at
Heritage Sights, results show that brand awareness is not
always a guarantee of commercial success. In fact, fame is
a poor asset: it drives sight-seeing (coming to the heritage
place) but not sight-visiting (consuming cultural products:
i.e. the entrance fees, the guided tours, etc). The
implications on corporate branding are discussed: since
fame and strong brand awareness are not synonymous of
firm reputation and favourable brand equity, strategies for
giving contents and sense for famous brands must be
developed. Moreover, merchandising actions should be
strengthened to take advantage of the behavioral
compulsory carried by fame.

Mots clés: buyer behavior; impact of corporate fame

Domaines: Gestion et management

Christine Petr. Tourist Buyer Behavior at Heritage Sights: Is It Interesting to Be a Star ?. Society for Marketing Advances, Nashville (Tenessee), 2006. ⟨halshs-00094674⟩