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Top1. Introduction
Building a strong brand image has been a vital matter for hotel managers. A strong brand image is an asset for hotels that strive for attracting tourists from home and abroad. A favorable brand image can help hotels differentiate their offerings from those of their competitors. Favorable brand image can be built only when the brands can satisfy customers’ need in a better way. Each strong brand in the world has a special meaning to their target customers, and it has been possible for their continuous efforts to build and maintain a good brand image. Consequently, the brand image and the overall positive brand experience obtained from a brand is considered to be the most important asset for a hotel business. A great brand image begets lots of benefits for the organization as it helps build a strong base of loyal customers. There is a fierce competition among the hotels with a strong brand image for occupying the loyal customers since the market becomes increasingly saturated. Hence, it is imperative not to identify only the factors influencing brand image but also to construct a brand image model in the hotel industry (Erkmen & Hancer, 2019; Song et al., 2019). However, the lack of supporting empirical evidences in the hospitality literature makes it difficult to pave the ways for establishing a brand image for the hotels.
On the other hand, having inadequate research in this industry in Bangladesh hinders the managers from understanding how customers evaluate hotel brands. Thus, hotels presently hold a misconception about customers. At the same time, customers also hold a misconception about hotels. As a result, hotels cannot offer appropriate services to their customers, and customers cannot get a level of satisfaction from hotels (Iglesias et al., 2019). From that ground, this study tries to present a fine-tuned framework for understanding the factors affecting hotel brand image.
Hotels are inseparable parts of the tourism industry of a nation that is a hub of international tourists. Hence hotels can contribute a lot to the economic development of the countries. Bangladesh tourism industry has a great prospect due to the fact that the country has attractive scenic beauty and a rich cultural heritage. The country has lots of attractive tourism destinations, including Cox's Bazar, the longest beach in Bangladesh and the Sundarbans, the largest mangrove forest. If the country’s tourism sector has a strong image all over the world, it might be another sector to earn dollars after garment sector (Emerging hospitality in Bangladesh, 2012). The pre-condition for a vibrant tourism sector includes better hotels and resorts with safe and modern amenities, which the tourists value. So it is necessary to explore the issues tourists consider for choosing hotels. However, reviewing the marketing and branding research regarding the tourism sector, researchers conclude that there are few sketchy and inconclusive research in customer-based brand equity (Yun et al., 2020), specifically in the hotel industry. Although the Bangladesh hospitality sector is highly likely to attract international tourists, this sector has not achieved a favourable image among the foreigners due to poor infrastructure and government policy and other issues. Moreover, the image branding mechanism of hotel industry is not up to the mark and no systematic researches have been conducted on how to increase the brand image of the hotels in Bangladesh (El-Said, 2020) though such researches are being conducted in developed countries (Guillet, 2020; Yun et al., 2020). Thus the present study applied the theoretical framework of Aaker’s Customer-Based Brand Equity Framework-1996, Keller’s Customer-Based Brand Equity (CBBE) Pyramid-2003 and Baker’s Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) Model-2001, with respect to hotel industry and suggested a unified model and this model might be both conceptually and statistically meaningful in building strong brand image of tourism industry. Hence the main objectives of this study are;