Title: Wine tourism destination image on the web: a comparison between conveyed and perceived communication drivers

Authors: Monica Fait; Paola Scorrano; Federica Cavallo; Lea Iaia

Addresses: Department of Management, Economics, Mathematics and Statistics, University of Salento, Ecotekne, Via per Monteroni, 73100 Lecce, Italy ' Department of Management, Economics, Mathematics and Statistics, University of Salento, Ecotekne, Via per Monteroni, 73100 Lecce, Italy ' Department of Management, Economics, Mathematics and Statistics, University of Salento, Ecotekne, Via per Monteroni, 73100 Lecce, Italy ' Department of Management, Economics, Mathematics and Statistics, University of Salento, Ecotekne, Via per Monteroni, 73100 Lecce, Italy

Abstract: Assuming that actual or potential wine tourists may perceive the wine tourism destinations' image using as cognitive keys what has been communicated by both wine tourism destinations and travelling bloggers, the research aims at carrying out an analysis which: 1) suggests the identification of the main recurring themes and their importance in communicating the destination image; 2) highlights the [eventual] gap existing between what is communicated by the wine tourism destinations and what is transmitted by third party actors (in this case, by bloggers in their own blogs). The approach is innovative because: 1) the creation of a communicative and relational sphere of the image derives from techniques and instruments that stimulate conversations, taking advantage of the bi-directional communication potentialities offered by the web; 2) it suggests an operational framework through which it is possible to identify the dimensions to decode the extracted information.

Keywords: wine tourism; tourist destinations; blogs; bloggers; destination image; web communication; text mining; internet; image communication; online communication.

DOI: 10.1504/JIBED.2016.077715

Journal for International Business and Entrepreneurship Development, 2016 Vol.9 No.2, pp.169 - 189

Received: 05 Nov 2015
Accepted: 05 Nov 2015
Published online: 13 Jul 2016 *

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