Are IKEA customers potential visitors of Sweden? : Case study of Belgian IKEA customers

IKEA is a brand that is known around the world and because it features many markers in their products, operations, and marketing that showcase its country of origin, Sweden has gained worldwide recognition simultaneously. The tourism industry could benefit from this positive image that Sweden has gained through IKEA’s popularity, by marketing themselves among the brand’s consumers using that positive image. Recently, Visit Sweden, the national DMO of the said country, has developed the campaign ‘Discover the Originals’ that responds to IKEA’s link with Sweden and tries to include tourism in th... Mehr ...

Verfasser: Vangeel, Gemma
Dokumenttyp: Student thesis
Erscheinungsdatum: 2022
Verlag/Hrsg.: Högskolan Dalarna
Institutionen för kultur och samhälle
Schlagwörter: product-country image / tourism destination image / travel intention / DMO / Sweden / IKEA / Other Social Sciences / Annan samhällsvetenskap
Sprache: Englisch
Permalink: https://search.fid-benelux.de/Record/base-26528247
Datenquelle: BASE; Originalkatalog
Powered By: BASE
Link(s) : http://urn.kb.se/resolve?urn=urn:nbn:se:du-42148

IKEA is a brand that is known around the world and because it features many markers in their products, operations, and marketing that showcase its country of origin, Sweden has gained worldwide recognition simultaneously. The tourism industry could benefit from this positive image that Sweden has gained through IKEA’s popularity, by marketing themselves among the brand’s consumers using that positive image. Recently, Visit Sweden, the national DMO of the said country, has developed the campaign ‘Discover the Originals’ that responds to IKEA’s link with Sweden and tries to include tourism in that image among consumers. This quantitative study aims to see whether such campaigns that respond to the product-country image of private companies are effective in impacting the travel intention of the companies’ consumers. The first research question aims to find out the impact of IKEA’s product-country image on the intention of Belgian IKEA customers to travel to Sweden. This will be analysed by interpreting the correlation between brand image and country image as the independent variable and travel intention as the dependent variable. The second research question on the other hand will evaluate whether the ‘Discover the Originals’ campaign that is developed by Visit Sweden to respond to IKEA’s strong relationship with its country of origin, is increasing intention to travel to Sweden. The study confirms the applicability of previous research on the specific case of Belgian IKEA customers, given that the positive product-country image of IKEA on other foreign markets was already supported. Using the results of an online questionnaire that was distributed in relevant Facebook groups with members that were residing in cities spread over Belgium, analyses were made and interpreted. This delivered results that are aligned with the findings from existing literature. Positive product-country image impacts visit intentions after being exposed to the campaign, which indicates that the campaign is in particular valuable when ...