Storytelling research of consumers' self-reports of urban tourism experiences in China

Using brand netnography (analyzing first-person on-line stories consumers tell that include discussions of their product and brand use), this article probes how visitors interpret the places, people, and situations that they experience while traveling in China (People's Republic of China). The visitors' reports focus on four greater metropolitan areas in China: Beijing, Lijiang, Shanghai, and Xi'an. Visitor stories interpreting these destinations support Robert McKee's wisdom that powerful storytelling moves people via unique “inciting incidents”—incidents serving to unfreeze or throw life out-of-balance. The visitors' destination lived-dramas give credence to Tom Peter's advocacy of focusing strategically on brand and Doug Holt's treatise on how brands become icons. The analysis includes applying Heider's balance theory in maps showing immediate and downstream positive and negative associations of concepts, events, and outcomes in visitors' stories. These maps include descriptions of how visitors experience specific Chinese destinations unique promises (i.e., distinct cultural history, minority way-of-life (Naxi society), China's Big Apple, China's origin, respectively for Beijing, Lijiang, Shanghai, and Xi'an). The article provides a revisionist proposal to Holt's five-step strategy for building destinations as iconic brands and suggestions for tourism management.