Investigating of the Impact of the Destination Brand Equity on the Loyalty of the Tourists to the Tourism Area of the Shiraz

Destination branding is one of the most important topics in the field of tourism marketing.Therefore,the purpose of present research is to investigate of the Impact of the destination brand equity on the loyalty of the tourists to Shiraz in order to increase the tourists and destination branding.The present study is applied regarding purpose and descriptive-survey,based on the method of collecting the data.The statistical population are the tourists who visited Shiraz during the period from April to Oct. 2017.The sample size was found to be 384 based on Morgan’s table and Cochran’s formula for an unlimited population.The questionnaire’s validity and reliability were confirmed by experts and Cronbach’s Alpha, respectively.For analysis of data,the structural equation modeling, confirmatory factor analysis and SPSS23 and AMOS23 softwares were used.The findings showed that the destination brand equity have a significant effect on the loyalty of tourists.The awareness of the destination does not have a significant effect on the holistic image,but it does have a significant effect on the perceived quality.The holistic image has a significant effect on the perceived quality and also the perceived quality has a significant effect on the attitudinal and behavioral loyalty.The cognitive and conative image does have a significant effect on the behavioral loyalty,but affective image does not have a significant effect on the behavioral loyalty.The cognitive and affective image through the holistic image as the intermediate variable,does have a significant effect on the behavioral loyalty,but the conative image through the holistic image,does not have a significant effect on the behavioral loyalty.