The purpose of the paper is to present a cross-cultural model of the customer-based brand equity for a tourism destination, encompassing four proposed dimensions—awareness, image, quality and loyalty. Previous research findings on the concept of measurement invariance are employed in the empirical investigation of the proposed model, which is tested on two competitive European tourism destinations (Slovenia and Austria) from the perspective of two culturally heterogeneous tourist groups (Germans and Croatians). The results of the cross-cultural model imply that the model is robust and cross-culturally comparable because neither the selected tourism destination nor the potential tourists’ evaluations exert an impact on the dimensions of the construct proposed in the paper. The results at different levels indicate that the conditions for configural and metric invariance are fully satisfied, whereas the conditions for scalar invariance are partially satisfied.

In the past, branding research was mostly associated with physical goods (Aaker and Keller, 1990; and Na et al., 1999). These days research interest is also focused on analyzing services brands (De Chernatony and Dall’Olmo, 1999; and De Chernatony and McDonald, 2001) as well as corporate brands (Ind, 1997; Gregory and Wiechmann, 1999; and Dowling, 2002). However, destination branding is one of the newest research areas (Cai, 2002; Morgan et al., 2002; Morgan and Pritchard, 2002; Olins, 2002; Papadopoulus and Heslop, 2002; Konecnik, 2004; and Tasci et al., 2007). Researchers have broadly debated the extent to which the branding principles traditionally developed for product brands can also apply to service and corporate brands. In investigating the differences and similarities between product and service brands, De Chernatony and Dall’Olmo (1999) concluded that the concept of a brand is similar between products and services, although the emphasis given to the different elements of branding strategies may differ. Therefore, there is a need for adjustments in emphasis to reflect the characteristics of services, organizations or even destinations.

The concept of brand equity has generated great interest among marketing researchers over the past 15 years (Aaker, 1991 and 1996; and Keller, 1993 and 1998). Although the financial aspect of the concept was initially investigated (Barwise, 1993), its perspective from the customer’s point of view is emerging as one of the preferred research interests within the branding literature (Keller, 1993 and 1998; Faircloth et al., 2001; Yoo and Donthu, 2001; and Shah and Norjaya, 2010). In spite of the broad interest in investigating the brand equity phenomenon from the customer’s point of view, so far no single approach to its theoretical conceptualization has been accepted (Agarwal and Rao, 1996; and Erdem and Swait, 1998). In addition to many open questions in the theoretical area, several dilemmas arise about its accurate measurement (Yoo and Donthu, 2001). A number of measuring instruments for brand equity were proposed, either at the theoretical (Kamakura and Russell, 1993; and Park and Srinivasan, 1994) or empirical (Baldinger and Rubinson, 1996) levels. Unlike the previous level of versatility of brand equity measurement instruments, there is recognition of some efforts leading towards the adjustment of brand equity measures. These steps are evident in analyses of several researchers (Na et al., 1999; Low and Lamb, 2000; Mackay, 2001; Faircloth et al., 2001; and Yoo and Donthu, 2001 and 2002) based on Aaker’s (1991) and (1996) and Keller’s (1993) and (1998) categorization.

Brand Management Journal, Cross-Cultural Model, Customer-Based Brand Equity, Tourism Destination, European tourism destinations, Tourism Destination Phenomenon, Computer-Assisted Telephone Interviewing (CATI).