Exploring the Effects of Social Media Activities on Brand Resonance (Cognitive and Emotional) and loyalty of European Tourists Visiting Tehran

Social media activities could, together with other managerial and service factors, substantially contribute to the development of tourism by attracting tourists through promoting the attractions, providing them with useful information on historical places, customs, cultural heritage, tourist attractions, and the historical and cultural potentials of the countries and regions they are supposed to visit. This descriptive survey study, therefore, sought to investigate the effect of social media advertisements, audience participation, and word-of-mouth advertising on European tourists’ brand resonance through the cognitive and emotional images as well as attitudinal and practical loyalties in social media. The population of the study comprised of the European tourists who visited Tehran from March to June 2019. The Cronbach’s alpha coefficient was used for the inferential analysis of the collected data, and KMO was applied to measure the internal consistency of the tool used. Moreover, Bartlett’s test was administered to confirm the sampling adequacy and the correctness of factors separation. The structural equation modeling method was also used for identifying the relationships among the variables. The results of the study indicated that social media advertisement, audience participation and brand awareness were effective on the cognitive image of the European tourists who visited Tehran, and that audience participation and word-of-mouth advertising affected their emotional image. It was also found that cognitive and emotional images would affect the attitudinal and practical loyalties which in turn would influence the brand resonance that could be helpful in attracting tourists provided that it is accompanied by well-defined plans in terms of creativity and innovation in advertising, knowing the audience, and choosing appropriate advertisements to be published in social media.