摘要：This paper focuses on two phenomena that are quite unusual, but relatively often present in the literature about consumer behaviour and traditional brand management – brand personality and self-congruity. Here they are examined within the framework of tourists’ behaviour and destination management. Consequently, brand personality relates to the perception of destination as if it were a person, i.e. the assessment of a set of human characteristics associated with the destination. Self-congruity stands for the assessment of the congruence between one’s personality and destination’s personality. Online research on the sample of young domestic tourists of the city of Split (N = 263) examined the structure of the perceived destination personality of Split, and explored the role that the perceived destination personality and self-congruity have in predicting tourists’ behavioural intentions (recommendation and return). The participants mostly perceived Split as beautiful, relaxed and cheerful, and the least as hard-working, glamorous and western. Those participants who assessed the personality of Split more positively and estimated their personality to correspond more to the personality of Split, had greater tendency to recommend Split, in comparison to those participants who did not see themselves to be similar to Split and assessed its personality more negatively. The intention to return was only predicted by the perceived destination personality, with those participants seeing the personality of Split more positively being more likely to visit again. The discussion section includes some observations on the methodological shortcomings of this and similar studies, as well as some guidelines for the forthcoming research and practice.
关键词：brand (destination) personality; city of Split; self-congruity; tourists’ behavioural intentions
