The effects of joint brand advertising on perceived authenticity of an emerging heritage site and tourists’ visit intentions

Whilst authenticity is a thoroughly investigated research area in marketing and branding, its application to destination branding is yet to be addressed. Also, understanding how joint branding in an advertisement provides additional value (i.e. authenticity) to an emerging destination is important to lure tourists and increase the destination’s attractiveness. The purpose of this paper is to investigate the effectiveness of a joint brand advertisement featuring familiar/less familiar tourism brands along with an emerging heritage destination brand. The paper employs a between-subjects experimental design with 213 British participants recruited from an online panel. The results demonstrate that a joint brand advertisement with a familiar tourism brand enhances tourists’ intention to visit towards an emerging heritage site. Moreover, joint brand advertising with a familiar tourism brand enhances authenticity of the emerging heritage site, which in turn, increases visit intentions. These effects do not occur with a less familiar tourism brand. The findings suggest that marketers may apply to joint brand advertisements featuring familiar brands in order to efficaciously promote an emerging heritage destination. Also, they may highlight authenticity in joint brand advertising campaigns if they aim to increase visits and the perceived authenticity of an emerging heritage destination brand.