Developing focus group methodology: Towards a greater understanding of destination image creation

This paper presents an alternative method for exploring the impact of marketing materials on visitor’s expectations and attitudes towards literary tourism sites. The goal is to achieve a greater level of understanding as to... [ view full abstract ]

This paper presents an alternative method for exploring the impact of marketing materials on visitor’s expectations and attitudes towards literary tourism sites. The goal is to achieve a greater level of understanding as to the impact of marketing materials on visitor’s perceptions and motivations and seeks to aid literary heritage site marketers to develop better communications. The work explores the relevance of narrative transportation (a construct from the psychology of reading) to literary heritage sites, explores the split within the conceptualisation of authenticity (object vs existential authenticity), and aims to investigate how the presentation of these constructs might explain a literary tourists level motivation to visit and level engagement with a literary heritage experience. It is suggested that in order to gain such an understanding modifications need to be made to the focus group methodology. The findings of which, will have practical implications for marketers of literary heritage.