The Incorporation of Consumer Experience into the Branding Process: An Investigation of Name-Brand Hotels

Given the growing number of hotel brands, improving consumer experience has become an increasingly important area of interest to industry practitioners. The purpose of this study is to investigate the relationship between hotel guests' brand experience, knowledge and loyalty to name-brand hotels. Confirmatory factor analysis and structural equation modeling with the incorporation of a second-order factor analysis were employed to achieve the research goals. The findings indicate that brand experience was represented as a holistic concept with sensory, affective, behavioral and intellectual aspects. While brand experience influences brand loyalty, its impact is partially mediated by brand knowledge. This is a pioneer study that combines consumer experience with branding in the hospitality industry and offers practical suggestions to facilitate hotel managers in their development of effective branding strategies. Copyright (c) 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.