THE EFFECT OF WELLNESS BRAND AWARENESS ON EXPECTED AND PERCEIVED SERVICE QUALITY

Enterprises in the tourism sector are being exposed to ever fiercer national and international competition and are confronted with difficulties in market positioning. One possibility for achieving differentiation on the market is high service quality and the creation of strong wellness brands. The aim of the present work is to investigate whether brands suggest a promise of quality that also appears to be especially important in wellness tourism. In this connection the study ascertains whether the brand awareness of wellness guests influences the perception of quality. The study also investigates whether demographic differences exist between brand aware and non-brand aware wellness guests. The results show that brands of wellness cluster are relatively weakly anchored in people's minds. There are demographic differences between brand aware and non-brand aware wellness guests. The existence of brand awareness raises the expected quality but not the perceived quality.