Differentiating the Destination Branding Methods of Emerging Markets: A Systematic Review: An Abstract

Destination branding is a phenomenon gaining widespread interest due to increased global competition for tourists (Matiza and Slabbert 2020). Described as an offshoot of place branding, destination branding tends to be focused mainly on achieving tourism objectives (Braun 2012). One key antecedent of the increased global competition for tourists is the opening of emerging markets. Emerging markets have been positioned as the “growth engines of the world” (Sinha and Sheth 2018, p. 217). Despite this, there is a notable dearth of research on the destination branding of emerging markets (cf. Martinez 2016).

To gauge the progress of this stream of research and inform future research, it is necessary to conduct a review of refereed journal articles (Williams and Plouffe 2007). This review aims to answer the following questions, (i) what are the trends in terms of journals, themes, emerging markets studied, and methodology?, and (ii) what branding methods have been used and which ones are more effective? This paper will provide a systematic review of the research on destination branding in emerging markets, something that has not been done to date. Although Dinnie (2004) and Vuignier (2017) review the literature, their reviews neither focus on destination branding nor on emerging markets.

In line with the systematic search procedures e.g., Hao and Paul (2019), we searched for articles published in peer-reviewed journals on electronic databases and by scrutinizing the reference lists of related reviews. Overall, the search yielded 31 articles published in 13 journals spanning the years 2008–2019. The findings show that the majority of the articles were published in the Place Branding & Public Diplomacy journal. Additionally, emerging markets in East Asia (e.g., China) and the Middle East and North Africa (e.g., United Arab Emirates) were the most studied, while the Eastern European and South American emerging markets were not as widely studied. Moreover, the most widely-studied theme was destination/place image. With regard to the methodology, an overwhelming majority of papers used exploratory methods such. Our analysis of offline versus online branding efforts revealed that both are important; however, a combination of both is the most effective.

In sum, this study developed a novel approach to analyzing destination branding. Research implications include the need for more confirmatory methods to enhance generalizability of findings. This study’s major limitation was having to make inferences due to the limited branding information. Thus, future research should incorporate more in-depth examinations of branding. For practitioners employing online techniques such as influencer marketing, it is best to use influencers who are natives of the destination to enhance credibility.