The influence of market heterogeneity on the relationship between a destination's image and tourists’ future behaviour

In the past decade, companies and academics have become aware of the great benefits of maintaining a solid base of loyal customers. Such customer loyalty is also important to other entities—such as tourist destinations. Building on the services-marketing literature, the present study develops an innovative model for evaluation of the effect of a destination's image on the loyalty intentions of tourists. The study then explores whether market heterogeneity affects this relationship by performing a latent cluster analysis. Four major clusters of tourists emerge—according to the tourists’ need for variety. The results show that there are significant differences among these segments in terms of the effects of a destination's image on tourists’ intentions to return to a destination and their intentions to recommend it to friends and relatives.