Comparing Online Destination Image with Conventional Image Measurement — The Case of Tallinn

An overview of a method to automatically analyze thousands of Blog entries is provided and it compares the findings of a conventional image study with the content mining approach to provide insights into destination image representation in the online and offline world.

Abstract

With the abundant availability of Blogs and reviews marketers are facing the challenge of extracting relevant knowledge from these sources as these insights can be used for marketing intelligence. However, it is uncertain if the topics and the language used in Blogs reflect what researchers traditionally investigate in conventional image studies. This paper provides an overview of a method to automatically analyze thousands of Blog entries. Furthermore, it compares the findings of a conventional image study with the content mining approach to provide insights into destination image representation in the online and offline world. The results indicate that automated content analysis reproduces the findings from image studies to a great extent. Therefore they are a valuable additional source of information for DMOs.