CUSTOMER ENGAGEMENT WITH TOURIST DESTINATIONS: ADAPTATION AND VALIDATION OF A SCALE

Abstract:

The relationship between customers and brands is gaining new perspectives based on the greater use of social media. The relationship between customers and companies, based on the service-dominant logic, becomes reciprocal, interactive, and collaborative. Customer engagement represents this relationship between costumers and brands. Several models for measuring customer engagement are identified in the literature, however, these models do not consider the role of negative engagement. Therefore, the aim of this study is to contribute to the external validity of a consumer engagement scale, adapting it to the context of tourist destinations. The measurement model is composed of four first-order constructs (content engagement, value co-creation, advocacy, and negative engagement). After the back translation and content validity, the data were applied to a final sample of 239 tourists who should describe their engagement with the last destination they visited for the first time. After checking the factor loadings, data reliability and relationship with other constructs, the construct validity was identified (discriminant, convergent and nomological validity). The results indicate that the model is suitable for measuring engagement with tourist destinations and represents the first study that adapts and replicates the proposed scale. In addition to these academic contributions, the study presents a model that allows managers to measure the engagement of tourists with destinations. The main limitation of the research stems from the application of the scale, without comparison with other models, suggesting that further studies broaden the debate on the dimensionality of the construct, based on the comparison of different models.

Keywords:
consumer engagement; service dominant logic; tourist destination; construct validity