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Developing constructs for empirical investigation
Z. Saleki, M.S.M. Zahari & S.A. Talib
Faculty of Hotel and Tourism Management, Universiti Teknologi MARA, Shah Alam, Malaysia
ABSTRACT: Image is a dynamic concept that may be altered or changed due to earlier experiences
or when the individual is exposed to various sources. Induced (promotional materials), organic (word of
mouth) and autonomous sources of information (news articles, educational materials) are the image for-
mation factors which perceived by individual before experiencing a destination. Perceiver characteristics
(socio—demographic) who normally filter the information could also contribute in shaping the image.
These constructs are considered as secondary image that create individual intent than that primary image
which is formed by individual actual visitation. This paper reviews the pre—image formation factors,
tourism images and tourists visit intention constructs subsequently developing conceptual study frame-
work showing the logical relationship between them.
Keywords
:
Image formation, tourism images, tourist visit intention
1 INTRODUCTION
product's success or failure. Images therefore can
give a pre-test for the travelers and transposed pic-
ture of an area into the mind of tourists. There-
fore, it has become one of the most popular topics
in the tourism literatures (Pike, 2002).
A positive correlation between image and inten-
tion was found in numerous studies and the find-
ings were consistent with consumer and tourist
behavior. Country image has been investigated
largely from various viewpoints including the inter-
national marketing and tourism. The tourism lit-
eratures have mainly focused on the country image
as a tourism destination image which centrally
relate to loyalty, satisfaction and perceptions of
service quality (Bigne, Sanchez & Sanchez, 2001).
Though, these two constructs (country image and
tourism destination image) have been previously
examined under one construct, scholars lately
have called for the need to explore the impact of
tourism activities on both country and destination
image as two different related constructs (Martínez
& Alvarez, 2010). Scholars even believed that hotel
image should be considered as third and independ-
ent construct together with country image and des-
tination image when it comes to the exploration of
tourism activity impacts in a particular country.
Image in actual fact is a dynamic concept that
may change due to earlier experiences or when the
individual is exposed to various sources of informa-
tion (Dann, 1996). The image shaped by induced,
organic, and autonomous sources of information
that essentially perceived before experiencing a
Recognizing travelers' behavioral intentions and
revisit intention is a vital objective of both host des-
tinations and destination marketing organizations.
In general terms, behavioral intention as an imme-
diate antecedent of behavior and to direct behavior
in an organized and thoughtful manner (Fishbein
& Ajzen, 1975) and behavioral intentions means an
individual's predicted or planned future behavior
(Swan & Trawick, 1981). Behavioral intentions in
the tourism industry context denote a potential
traveler's expectancy of their future trip to the des-
tination of interest (Chen & Tsai, 2007).
As a general rule, the stronger the intention to
involve in a behavior, the more to be expected the
behavior will be completed. In this sense, when an
opportunity to act arises, the intention will lead to
actual behavior, thus if the intention is measured
correctly, it would provide a noble predictor of
behavior (Fishbein & Ajzen, 1975).
(Martineau, 1958) construed that human behav-
ior also is relying on image than objective reality
and following that many scholars in different fields
have been attracted to the concept of images. The
adoption of the concept of the image has directed
to “image theory” which suggests that the world
is a psychological or inaccurate picture of objec-
tive reality existing in the mind of the individu-
als (Myers, 1968). When initial credibility varies
from the public's perception of merchandise, the
perception of the image will probably define that
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