By: Prabal Thapa

For my Master thesis, I choose the field of tourism marketing and my topic is “The drivers of brand equity: An empirical study of driver’s effects on brand equity of Pokhara based on international tourist”. The main purpose of research is to find the key drivers of brand equity of destination. To accomplish the research purpose I have use the quantitative method.

I have granted fund support from “The scholarship Northern insight” due to which I was able to collect the data for my research. I developed the questionnaires and collect the data in Pokhara city of Nepal with International tourists who were in Pokhara with visiting purpose. The data collection was held from 7th April 2016 to 14th April 2016. My samples consist of international tourist of 36 different countries.

 In my study quality service, quality infrastructure, quality environment, cost value, destination personality, unique image and customer loyalty concepts were implied to research model. There are nine hypotheses and out of that five hypotheses are accepted and rest of them is rejected.

According to research analysis, I am able to find the several drivers that influence to build strong brand equity of destination and its shows the driver’s relation with brand equity. 

According to my finding there are six drivers which are statistically significant effect on brand equity. The finding gives contribution to literature review by understanding of tourism branding and practical implication for tourism managers and stakeholder of tourism industries, who wants to develop destination as brand and helps to understand the drivers to evaluate the strategies for enhancing strong brand equity.