The purpose of this study is to define the relationship between Korean Wave and Korea's tourism image and to provide valuable information on tourism marketing through analysis the impact of Korean Wave on Korea's tourism image.
The literature review ...
The purpose of this study is to define the relationship between Korean Wave and Korea's tourism image and to provide valuable information on tourism marketing through analysis the impact of Korean Wave on Korea's tourism image.
The literature review revealed that destination image is formed by two interrelated components: cognitive and affective evaluation, which are influenced by personal factors and stimulus factors. The stimulus factors are information sources and previous experience toward the destination, whereas the personal factors are the socio-psychological factors of person. Among the image formation agents, popular culture is assumed to have significant impact on tourism image. Therefore Korean wave is the important image formation agent on Korea's tourism image.
It turned out that information influence not affective evaluation but cognitive evaluation, whereas affective evaluation is influenced by socio-psychological factors of person. The conceptual and empirical perspectives from the literature led to two hypotheses: Firstly, The amounts of exposure on Korean Wave significantly influence cognitive evaluation of Korea's tourism image. Secondly, The attitudes toward Korean Wave significantly influence affective evaluation of Korea's tourism image.
In order to verify such hypotheses, the students of Tsinghua University in China were selected. To analyze the research results, two analyses methods including Regression analysis and descriptive analysis were used.
The research results were as follows. First, The amounts of exposure on Korean Wave significantly influence the cognitive evaluation composed of 'quality of experience' 'attraction' and 'value'.
Second, The attitudes toward Korean Wave significantly influence the affective evaluation composed of 'pleasure' 'awakening' and 'importance'. The image which constructed by Korean wave tend to have more positive effects on Korea's tourism image.
This research confirms that Korean Wave is very important on Korea's destination image and shows the new vision to the research on destination image. This research could be used as valuable information for marketing plan on inbound tourism of Korea.