Creating off-season demand: Lessons from brand extension literature

Tourist destinations suffer from fluctuation in demand due to seasonality. This creates challenges related to capacity management, workforce retention, and profitability. To break out of seasonal fluctuations destinations... [ view full abstract ]

Tourist destinations suffer from fluctuation in demand due to seasonality. This creates challenges related to capacity management, workforce retention, and profitability. To break out of seasonal fluctuations destinations typically focus on developing new products to attract tourists during low season. One problem that arises, is that the market already has a strong seasonally based association of the destination, creating challenges because the positive perceptions are typically closely tied to the seasonality of the products. Literature on brand extensions focus on how a new product can benefit from using the name of an existing brand by capitalizing on the already developed, positive associations consumers have to the parent brand. In a similar vein, to benefit from a well-known destination name, a destination developing new attractions for low-season needs to establish associations that are not linked to the seasonality itself. As destinations with high seasonal fluctuations are typically known for their seasonally based attractions (skiing, sun and beach), existing associations and positioning may hurt their opportunities for increasing demand during other seasons. Fit between the associations of a parent brand and the brand extension is found to be the most important driver of brand extension success. One strategy may therefore be to develop associations not strongly linked to seasonal attractions. In this paper, we review the brand extension literature to develop propositions about factors that may influence the attractiveness of the destination during low season. We also report research from two winter destinations and show how focus on a non-seasonal association – high quality of the service interaction – have strong positive effect on intentions to return during low-season. Perceptions of service, unlike perceptions of e.g. the skiing area, are not linked to or limited to a specific season. The research use survey data from tourists visiting the destinations during high season to show that unlike experience of the skiing product itself, experiences of service-related factors have strong positive impact on intention to return during off-season. We argue that this effect is due to better fit between the high-season associations and the low-season associations.