| Summary: | It is a very competitive environment in today’s marketplace. In order to attract consumers companies and organizations are not just engaged in competition about selling their products or services, but also for the consumers’ perception. Because of the global competition destinations have become substitutable and due to that destination marketing organizations have to find ways to attract and keep consumers. Destination personality is considered a good way to differentiate the destination. It has also been suggested in existing literature that consumers are more inclined to prefer brands that have personality traits that are congruent with their own traits. This could also have positive influence on the behavioral intentions of tourists. Consumer identification of brand personality is considered essential for marketers to understand, because brand personality can have the ability to affect word-of-mouth. The purpose of this master thesis is to investigate how destination personality connects to self-congruity and tourist-destination identification, as well as promotional behavior of word-of-mouth and behavioral intentions to revisit or recommend a destination. Existing literature was reviewed in order to investigate the above mentioned concepts. Thereafter a frame of reference was constructed in order to investigate these concepts further in connection to the case of Luleå. Data was collected through a quantitative questionnaire, and then analyzed in order to see if the theoretical propositions assumed in the literature review could be supported. The results of this thesis supports the theoretical propositions that destination personality, self-congruity and tourist-destination identification were positively connected to promotional behavior and behavioral intentions, this in connection to Swedish and international visitors of Luleå. The literature was also extended to some extent, as well as criticized based on the findings of the data analysis, resulting in recommendations for further research and ...
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