Identification Of Competing Destination Brand: The Case Of Okinawa Island

In the field of destination branding, some researchers have conducted comparative studies for the development of the customer-based brand equity measurement. Since brand equity is a relative measure, it is required to compare a brand to another to measure its effectiveness. However, the selection process of destinations for the comparison has been highly depending on the subjectivity of researchers. This study proposes to use of online travel reviews to identify a pair of similar destinations addressing what tourists have talked about the destinations by aiming at contributing to developing a reliable brand equity measurement. The study takes Okinawa (Japan) as a case in the destination brand category of "island resort destination", and the result indicates that Corsica (France) is the most similar destination among nine European destinations. Future research should develop scale items and test the reliability and the validity of them using the two destinations identified in this study.