*2.3. Customer-Based Brand Equity for a Tourism Destination*

Brand equity is measured from two different perspectives. First, there is the financial value of the brand to the firm and then there is the measure of the value to the customer (Keller 2003; Pappu and Christodoulides 2017). The financial value of the brand to the firm is measured by the result of customer-based brand equity. There are several studies that developed and tested accounting methods for the appraisal of the asset value of a brand name (Lassar et al. 1995). However, our paper focuses on brand equity from the perspective of the value to the customer.

Customer-based brand equity (CBBE) is at present more than 20 years old and a welldeveloped construct, the roots of which lead us to the 1980s (Fayrene and Lee 2011). During these years, this concept received much attention (Ruzzier 2010). The CBBE concept was defined "as the differential effect that brand knowledge has on consumer response to the marketing of that brand" (Keller 1998). There have been numerous attempts to summarize measures of brand equity, approaching the construct from different perspectives. The Table 1 below demonstrates those dimensions (Almeyda and George 2020).


#### **Table 1.** Customer-based brand equity dimensions.

Source: (Almeyda and George 2020).

The basic concept of CBBE is that the measure of the brand strength depends on how consumers feel, think and act with respect to the brand. To achieve consumer resonance a brand first needs to elicit emotional reactions from consumers. To achieve that, a brand must have an appropriate identity and the right meaning. At best, customers therefore consider the product as relevant and "their kind" (Koththagoda 2017). The model of customer-based brand equity for a tourism destination was proposed and verified by Konecnik and Gartner (2007). It was confirmed that the level of CBBETD is positively related to an extent to destination brand equity dimensions, which are presented further.
