The relationships among social media communication, brand equity and satisfaction in a tourism destination: the case of Danang city, Vietnam

PurposeThis paper aims to examine the role of social media communication, tourist satisfaction and destination brand equity components in enhancing destination brand equity based on the Stimulus – Organism – Response (S-O-R) theory.Design/methodology/approachThe conceptual model and research hypotheses were assessed using covariance-based structural equation modeling (SEM). An online survey was used to collect data from 369 domestic tourists who had traveled to Danang and knew about content related to Danang generated by either DMOs or other users on social media.FindingsExcept for the effect of DMO-generated social media communication on tourist satisfaction and the impact of destination brand awareness on destination brand loyalty, the findings confirmed the sequential causal relationships between research concepts based on the S-O-R model.Research limitations/implicationsFuture research should explore the proposed model based on comparisons of different nationalities to better understand the impact of cultural factors.Practical implicationsDMOs should associate social media with their marketing strategies to enhance destination brand equity, using cutting-edge technologies to create content and update information in a significant way to make communications by DMOs more effective. The findings especially suggest that UGC plays a vital role in improving brand equity dimensions, so DMOs could exploit UGC to engage existing customers and build relationships with potential customers. This research provides guidance for DMOs to improve their brand equity based on social media.Originality/valueThis study has contributed to the destination marketing literature by applying the S-O-R theory to propose a pathway for effectively increasing destination brand equity and highlight the importance of social media communication as a driver to achieve a hierarchical relationship between destination brand equity components and tourist satisfaction from stimulus to organism (e.g. cognition to affect).