The branding process of the world heritage historic city of Ayutthaya

Abstract

This study was established on the tourism and marketing perspectives of the stakeholders regarding the branding process of the cultural world heritage sites in Thailand. The Historic City of Ayutthaya world heritage site was selected as the unit to be studied. Thus, the purposes of the study were to 1) study the potential of the Historic City of Ayutthaya site, 2) analyze the marketing of the Historic City of Ayutthaya site, 3) evaluate the potential of the stakeholders in branding of the Historic City of Ayutthaya site, and 4) propose a branding process for the Historic City of Ayutthaya site.

Mixed research methodology was employed in this study. Researchers gathered 412 sets of questionnaires from foreign tourists and 290 sets of tests regarding the branding of the Historic City of Ayutthaya world heritage site were distributed to stakeholders to collect quantitative data. Additionally, semi-structured interviews were also conducted to collect qualitative data from 30 foreign tourists and 30 stakeholders related to the branding of the Ayutthaya site from January to March 2018. Content analysis was used for the interview results, whereas descriptive statistics (i.e., frequency, percentage, mean, and standard deviation) and inferential statistics (i.e., t-test and ANOVA) were employed for the analysis of the quantitative data.

The research results found that differences in the tourists’ characteristics (including geographic, demographic, behavioristic, and psychographic characteristics) influenced the tourists’ perspectives of the potential of the Historic City of Ayutthaya world heritage site. The target tourists for the Ayutthaya site were European tourists who travelled as a couple or with family and were 25-54 years old. In addition, ‘working age European tourists who arranged the trip by themselves to rest with their spouse’ should be the market positioning for the the Historic City of Ayutthaya world heritage site. Most of stakeholders had knowledge, skills, and positive attitudes in relation to branding. Furthermore, stakeholder characteristics, such as education and experience, influenced their knowledge of branding. A branding process of the world heritage Historic City of Ayutthaya was then proposed consisting of eleven steps, including: 1) evaluating the potential of stakeholders in regard to branding, 2) product positioning, 3) benchmarking analysis (product positioning), 4) market positioning, 5) benchmarking analysis (market positioning), 6) product and market positioning, 7) benchmarking analysis (product and market positioning), 8) brand creation, 9) brand implementation, 10) brand evaluation, and 11) monitoring and adaption.