How the Affluent Consumer Perceives and Experiences Hedonic Luxury Destination Brands: The Case of Dubai.

Abstract

Destination branding is a growing interest amongst researchers, nevertheless, it is still in its infancy (Hosany and Gilbert, 2010; Berrozpe, Campo and Yagüe, 2019). The focus is shifting from the tangible aspect of travellers’ experiences, to the intangible aspect where the destination brand identity and self-congruency is being addressed. This research expands on existing theories concerned with the relationship between destination brands and visitors in terms of loyalty and symbolic consumption to build a theoretical framework that demonstrates how the affluent consumer perceives a luxurious hedonic destination brand by examining visitors’ thoughts, emotions, motivations and behaviour patterns. The research is guided by established models and theories to understand the perceptions of luxury seeking cultures in hedonic destination brands. The study follows Holt’s (2004) myth making model, and therefore applies the concept of myth markets in the formation of the affluent consumer groups of a hedonic destination brand for the first time. As this is pioneering in the field, it was crucial to apply an interpretivist approach using the case study methodology. The research was also guided by other influential theories and models such as Hedonic Consumption theory (Hirschman and Holbrook, 1982) and the Theory of the Leisure Class (Veblen, 1994) to help guide data collection and interpretation. This was in aim to understand how affluent consumer groups emerge, what they consume in a hedonic destination, how they perceive luxurious destinations in relation to their identities (Gazley and Watling, 2015; Berrozpe, Campo and Yagüe, 2019), and self-congruity (Ekinci and Hosany, 2006; Ekinci, Sirakaya-Turk, and Preciado, 2013; Japutra, Molinillo-Jimenez and Ekinci, 2019 and Usakli and Baloglu, 2011) and how this could, potentially, impact the success of a destination brand with hedonic and luxurious position. The main aim of this study is to understand how affluent consumers perceive the luxurious hedonic destination brand of Dubai, in an attempt to create a blueprint for emerging destination brands’ DMOs to attract the luxury seeking market(s). The blueprint is demonstrated in a theoretical framework that introduces some universal concepts, which can be applied by others destination brands and their DMOs. Other concepts are specific to the cased destination brand of Dubai. As this research applied a qualitative case study, data collection was via focus groups, in-depth interviews and photo analysis. Data interpretation was done by the researcher, and guided by existing theories related to the study. The sampling used the snowballing technique by participants’ referral, based on psychographic criteria, with a sample size of 55 participants who were grouped into 12 focus groups, keeping a 5 to 4 participants’ average in each group. The researcher then revisited 7 of the participants for further information and photos discussion. As for the in-depth interviews, a sample of 5 participants (who were in managerial positions in Riyadh who worked with Dubai branches, headquarters and clients), were interviewed, one of them was contacted again for further information and photo sharing. After reaching the data saturation stage, data was analysed into thematic codes following the methods of Strauss and Corbin (1998), and Gibbs (2007). Findings of this study were categorised into three main sequential parts: (1) types of affluent consumers and their psychographic profiles, (2) their symbolic consumption patterns and symbolic benefits, and lastly (3) the interactional communication as part of the overall hedonic luxury destination experience. This developed a framework which demonstrates specifically how Dubai is perceived and experienced by affluent consumers, and how luxury destination brands can be built their experiences as hedonic and luxurious destination in the general sense.