Commerce and Management

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    Customer based brand equity for empowering Sri Lanka as a tourism destination: with special reference to tea tourism
    (University of Kelaniya, 2016) Koththagoda, K.C.; Thushara, S.C.
    Tea tourism is one of the alternative forms of tourism which is being operated in the tea growing regions in the world. Sri Lanka also can benefit from adopting and promoting tea tourism. The main purpose of this study is to propose a practical model to empower Sri Lanka as a tea tourism destination. In this study, Keller’s constructs of the pyramid of brand equity, including brand salience, brand performance, brand imagery, brand judgments, brand feelings, and brand resonance, are investigated and their relationships with brand equity, as well as their effects on customer loyalty and satisfaction in Tea tourism in Sri Lanka are determined. The statistical population of the present study is all foreign visitors from tea estates based recreational sites in Sri Lanka. The data were collected by administering questionnaire. The sample consisted with 385 randomly selected individuals. The research hypotheses were tested through structural equation modeling and the final model was confirmed. The findings of the study revealed that only the relationships between brand salience and customer loyalty, brand imagery and brand performance towards brand equity were not significant, and all other relationships were significant. Also, fit indices obtained from the conceptual model indicates that model is valid in explaining the relationships among variables to empower Sri Lanka as a Tea Tourism destination. Therefore this proposed model emphasized how marketers should design and implement the effective marketing programs to empower Sri Lanka as a tea tourism destination. In this way, Sri Lanka can be positioned as one of the attractive and more competitive tea tourism destinations in the world which in turn could make a positive impact on foreign exchange, employment oportunities and other economic factors.
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    Potential of Tea Tourism in Sri Lanka: A Review of Managerial Implications and Research Directions
    (Faculty of Commerce and Management Studies, University of Kelaniya, Sri Lanka, 2016) Koththagoda, K.C.; Dissanayake, D.M.R.
    Tea tourism is increasingly recognized as an important scope as per the trade value and integrated contribution marked for the sustainable development in tourism industry. At present, most of the tea growing countries are practicing tea tourism as a diversified concept alongside its main stream of revenue generations as bulk tea and value added tea. Since Sri Lanka has a prominent Ceylon tea brand image embedded with quality value proposition to worldwide consumer segments, tea could also be turned as multiple channel of revenue generation to tourism sector. Thus, the main aim of this concept paper is to study the possible managerial applications in tea tourism in the Sri Lankan context and to postulate research insights for future studies to investigate the proposition of how Sri Lanka as a tea destination could influence consumer behavioral responses. Further, this paper has highlighted the future directions for the industry practitioners to penetrate tea tourism as a concept-based tourism option to skim the potential revenue models. According to the empirical findings the tea tourism concept could have ability to build and strengthen different theoretical basements such as Destination Branding, Designation of Origin and willing to pay aspects in order to attract potential customers towards the destination and enhance the revisiting choice of customer towards the destination with the influence of customer satisfaction and customer loyalty. Further findings have emphasized the necessity of destination profiling to be alongside customer profiling when branding a destination. Conclusively the study demonstrates how empirical research propositions could provide knowledge inputs to tea tourism related business models.