The moderating effect of tourist’s involvement on the relationship between destination’s image and its future behavior

Abstract

Building on the services-marketing literature, the present study develops an innovative model for evaluation of the effect of customer perceptions on the loyalty intentions of customer. The study then explores whether market heterogeneity affects this relationship by performing a latent cluster analysis in the tourism industry. Three major clusters of tourists emerge—according to the tourists’ involvement. The results show that there are significant differences among these segments in terms of the effects of a destination’s image on tourists’ intentions to return to a destination and their intentions to recommend it to friends and relatives.