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2007 Annual International CHRIE Conference & Exposition
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(1997). Respondents were to rate on a five-point scale ranging from “uncomfortable” to “very comfortable” for
some personality traits and “not impressed” to “very impressed” for other personality traits. The personality
dimensions used were five (sincerity, excitement, competence, sophistication and ruggedness), while the personality
traits used were thirty-five:
•
For sincerity, the personality traits were:
down to earth, family oriented, honest, sincere, wholesome,
original, cheerful, friendly, and sentimental
.
•
For excitement, the personality traits were:
daring, exciting, trendy, spirited, cool, young, imaginative,
unique, contemporary, up to date and independent
.
•
For competence, the personality traits were:
reliable, secure, intelligent, successful, leader and confident
.
•
For sophistication, the personality traits were:
upper class, glamorous, good looking, charming,
feminine/masculine and gay/lesbian
.
•
For sophistication, the personality traits were:
outdoorsy, rugged and tough
.
The third part of the questionnaire was designed to measure the respondents’ perceived personality of Mykonos. The
five personality dimensions of the destination brand are determined by measuring the personality facets of the brand
instead of using personality traits, which are direct subsets of each brand personality dimension. Since personality
traits are subsets of personality facets, they can be used to measure the personality dimensions of the destination as
well. For example, personality traits of honesty, sincerity and reality are subsets of the personality facet of honesty
(Aaker, 1998). This will improve internal validity and reduce selection bias effects and testing effects due to the
influence of responding to questions in the second part of the questionnaire (Sekaran, 1984).
To ensure the validity of the data collected, the sequencing of items in the second and third parts of the
questionnaire were deliberately changed and both itemized interval and semantic differential scales were applied. A
pilot study on a sample size of 20 was conducted to test the reliability of the independent questions developed for
the questionnaire. From the reliability analysis, the Cronbach alphas for all questions in both first and third part of
the questionnaire were found to fall between the acceptable range of 0.8 and 0.9 (Sekaran, 1984). However, some of
the personality traits in the second part of the questionnaire recorded Cronbach alphas of 0.6 and below; those
between 0.5 and 0.7 were restructured, while those below 0.5 were dropped from the final questionnaire.
A survey approach using street contact and non-probability sampling was employed. Respondents were
foreign tourists approached at major shopping centers, bus interchanges and tourist attractions at Athens in Greece.
The questionnaire was accompanied by an explanation on the objective of the survey and the instructions for
completing the form. They could either be returned by mail in a stamped envelope provided or submitted via fax.
Five hundred questionnaires were distributed, and 138 (27.6 per cent) usable completed questionnaires were
returned. Thirty-six (26 per cent) of the respondents share both “top of mind” and “share of heart” preference for
Mykonos Island.
The tourists’ personality preference and their perceived personality for Mykonos were normalized and then
categorized to match the five dimensions of destination brand personality. The method used is similar to Aaker’s
(1998) brand personality scale (BPS). In this research, the new indices developed are called the “personality
preference index” (PPI) for personality preference and “brand personality index” (BPI) for perceived brand
personality. PPI was developed based on the mean value of all the personality traits (for personality preference). BPI
was developed based on the mean of all the personality facets (for perceived destination personality) obtained from
each respondent.
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