DESTINATION IMAGE ANALYSIS AND ITS STRATEGIC IMPLICATIONS: A LITERATURE REVIEW FROM 1990 TO 2019

Purpose of the study: "Image" not only exists in the market of consumption goods as well as tourism but also is the criteria usually used by consumers to make decisions. However, little literature is concerned with a comprehensive analysis of its development trajectory, application domains, and strategic implications. This study aims at conducting an extensive review of DI's current literature to examine the key concept of consumer behaviors. Methodology: Based on Scopus, this paper surveys the development trajectory of destination image using a literature review with the solo keyword “destination image” from 1990 to 2019. Main findings: The findings indicate that the development of destination image begins in 1995 and the overall growth is steady and strong. There are three development waves, such as 2002-2007, 2008-2013, and 2015-2019. These 908 articles were scattered across 182 different journals. Besides, all these keywords related to counties/areas are mostly equipped with tourism competitiveness as well. Applications of this study: This study reveals five problem domains of destination image including environment and government, destinations, tourists, culture, and others, respectively. This would call the attention of the executives and authorities concerned with environmental sustainability, adaptability/responsiveness of strategies, destination competitiveness, capabilities development, resource allocation, and tourist behavior (e.g., decision-making and post-purchase intention). Based on the nexus between “environment-destination-tourist”, this study proposed a strategic map of DI to future researchers and field workers of great interests to operationalize and conceptualize its coverage.


INTRODUCTION Destination image (DI)
"Image" is a decisive factor that drives consumers' decisions in the selection of a multitude of information. In the field of marketing, it is commonly known as "brand image" and "destination image (hereinafter DI)". Brand image refers to an overall impression that consumers have of a brand or a product, including cognition, emotion, and attitude (Levy, 1978). On the other hand, DI refers to one's knowledge, beliefs, and feelings about a particular destination (Crompton, 1979;Fakeye & Crompton, 1991;Baloglu & McClery, 1999b). Clearly, DI can exist in both the market of consumption goods and of tourism. In the early 1970s, DI was first introduced into the field of tourism by Hunt (1971) and has become an emerging research area (Stepchenkova & Mills, 2010;Gallarza et al., 2002). DI is a complex and subjective concept (Wang, 2000) and an important category that differentiates markets. Each destination competes through its own images to attract consumers to travel. In other words, if a tourist has more favorable images of a destination, s/he will be more likely to return to the same destination for a trip (Baloglu & McCleary, 1999b;Chon, 1990Chon, , 1992. In short, DI is an essential factor for tourists that influence their decision-making process about vacation and leisure activities (Mayo, 1975;Baloglu & McCleary, 1999a;Buhalis, 2000;Beerli & Martin, 2004;Chen & Tsai, 2007).

The purpose of this study --Why we do this?
Systematic literature review of DI has been scarce, including Chon (1990), Echtner and Ritchie (1991), Pike (2002Pike ( , 2007, Gallarza et al. (2002), Stepchenkova and Mills (2010), and Li et al. (2015), etc. Prior research in Chon's (1990) review of 23 frequently-cited articles found that a vast majority of research focuses on the effect of DI on tourist behaviors and satisfaction. Echtner and Ritchie (1991) addressed that future researchers can have more explorations on operational and conceptual definitions of DI when they reviewed 15 articles that mainly chose quantitative methodology to conduct research. Stepchenkova   In this study, 679 out of 908 (74.8%) selected articles are found in the traditional five major publishers: Taylor & Francis (253), Elsevier (185), SAGE (134), Emerald (80), and Wiley (27). A total of 155 (17.1%) articles are found outside of the above five publishers but in the university journals or reports from other academic institutes, such as Sustainability of MDPI, European Journal of Tourism Research of Varna University of Management, and e-Review of Tourism Research of Texas A&M University, etc. Therefore, it is suggested that future researchers need to pay attention to these five publishers, especially Taylor & Francis, Science Direct, and SAGE, but simultaneously expand the scope of literature searches.

DI and keywords with targeted countries/areas
Countries/areas listed in the 3,953 keywords from the scope of 908 DI articles have two meanings: firstly, destination, and secondly, country of origin of tourists. There are 365 keywords in terms of country/area (covering 73 countries/area); among them, China (including Hong Kong and Macau) appears most frequently (65); United States is the next (18); Taiwan and Turkey rank third (16); Australia and South Korea tie for fourth (15); the fifth is India (14); Malaysia ranks sixth (13); Japan/Spain/Iran/Greece ranks seventh (11 each); New Zealand/Portugal/UK (including England, Ireland, and Wales) rank eighth (10 each); the United Arab Emirates and Vietnam rank ninth (7 each); and South Africa ranks tenth (6) (see Table 1). In this report, the second-highest level of competitiveness country/areas is United States (2 nd in this study), the Hong Kong (3 rd ) and Mainland China (28 th ) are ranked the first in this study, Japan (6 th ) and Spain (23 th ) are ranked in the 7th in this study, UK (9 th ) and New Zealand (19 th ) are ranked in the 8 th in this study; Meanwhile, Taiwan (12 th ) is the 3 rd in this study, Australia (16 th ) and South Korea (13 th )are ranked in the 4th in this study, Malaysia (27 th ) is the 6 th in this study, and the United Arab Emirates (25 th )is the 9 th in this study. Other WEF TOP 10 countries/areas, such as Singapore (#1), Switzerland (#5), Germany (#7), Sweden (#8), and Denmark (#10), also appear in this study but are left out due to the small amount of publications (see Table 2). In summary, those countries/areas listed in DI research have a higher level of competitiveness in general and specifically in tourism. Those who have more competitiveness in tourism are more attractive to tourists.
In addition, a large number of "inbound/outbound" strings for students (e.g., Park et al., 2017) and business people (e.g., Rezaei et al., 2018) are shown in DI keywords. Basically, the terms of "inbound/outbound" can be further divided into the following categories:

Advanced analysis
Examining 3,953 keywords in the scope of 908 articles, DI is related to the following four aspects: (1) Problem domains-Every research aims at solving problems defined; (2) Destination attributes-Each destination has its own significance of tourism, e.g., country/area, heritage tourism (historic sites), or sporting events (Olympics), etc.; (3) Marketing and destination management-The former refers to the pull, while the latter refers to the push. Good marketing strategies and quality destination management can impress visitors and (4) Tourist behaviors-Visitors transform all destination-related information and perceptions into experiences that subsequently influence their travel behaviors when they travel between countries/regions.

DI and problem domains
Given that keywords can provide the image of research questions, methodology, and findings of each research (Chang & Katrichis, 2016, p. 793), this study scrutinizes keywords from the scope of 908 selected DI literature and found that their research questions cover 18 different aspects that can be categorized as five major areas: (1) Environmental uncertainty and government actions: sustainability, political stability, crisis management, and government actions; (2) Destination management: brand building, media application, service quality, and competitiveness; (3) Tourist behavior: motivation, experience value, satisfaction and loyalty, familiarity, identification and attachment, and willingness to revisit: (4) Cultural factors: cultural differences (impact) and effects of countries of origin; and (5) Others: image measurement and destination selection. In short, DI is mainly dealing with the problems of the "environment-destination-visitor" nexus. According to Boulding (1956), image is a combination of people's subjective values and knowledge, which is an influential tool in decision-making and in communicating with their external environment. Basically, tourists use DI to evaluate the environment, safety, tourism quality, and other travelers' comments in the selection of travel destinations. Managers of tourist sites and researchers use "cultural factors" to explain consumer behaviors (Ozdemir & Yolal, 2016). Prior research also suggests that destination culture can affect tourists' behaviors (Pizam & Sussmann, 1995;Liu, 2014).
Moreover, as tourists' preferences change and new destinations become more competitive, TQM plays a more crucial role in the tourism industry (Camison, 1996). Pine and Gilmore (1999) emphasize that consumer experiences can capture consumers rather than products and services. Therefore, destination managers should well maintain the facility, human resources, and other consumer behaviors to provide pleasant customers experiences (Ali et al., 2018). However, these factors may have interaction effects. For example, tourists' decision-making process can be impacted by media effects under the circumstance of political instability and terrorist attacks (Kapuściński & Richards, 2018). Service quality can affect customers' perceptions, which in turn affect subsequent behavioral intentions (Dubey & Sahu, 2019). Furthermore, the level of familiarity with destinations can influence tourists' image, emotional attachment, and loyalty (Stylidis et al., 2020).

DI and attributes
Kotler and Gertner (2002) define DI as the sum of beliefs and impressions that people hold about a place. DI revolves around information related to the destination, including: the destination itself, activities and events that occur in that place, etc. In this study, destination attributes associated with DI include: (1) Country/Area-e.g., country or state  (6) Crisis-e.g., earthquake (Tang, 2014;Ketter, 2016), terrorist attack (Henderson, 2003), and airport closures (Voltes-Dorta et al., 2017). In sum, tourists eventually tie their image to the destination (country/area) where activities/events/cultural events/crises would occur in that place.

DI and destination management
Each tourist destination represents its brand that can transform and communicate the unique nature of the territory, resulting in a value proposition that involves a series of functional, emotional, and intangible benefits (Martins, 2015). Basically, destination management is integrated management, which includes: marketing management, technology management, human resource management, resource management, quality management, and crisis management. In other words, all the nexus that tourists may encounter during their travel should be under control and well managed. The following section is an illustration of different aspects of destination management.

 Crisis management
Tourism is one of the most vulnerable industries to crises and disasters (Santana, 2004). The crises range from terrorist attacks, infectious diseases (e.g., SARS and COVID-19), natural disasters (e.g., hurricanes), to accidents (e.g., economic crises, refugee surges, airport closures). Most importantly, post-crisis recovery strategies from the unit concerned are influential in rebuilding DI and promoting future travel business (e.g., Ryu

DI and tourist behavior
Tourist behaviors associated with DI include three phasesbefore, during, and after the occurrence. Before travelling, tourist behaviors involve: (1)

DI and theoretical foundations
This section focuses on theory, methodology, and dedicated researchers in the DI research field. In general, a theory is a generalized phenomenon, which is the result of discovery obtained through specific research experiments or systematic observation over a long period of time. But a phenomenon can be extended to different theoretical domains for different research questions. There are 44 keywords in terms of "theoretical foundations" are shown in prior literature. Theories that are frequently adopted in the DI field include: "Response Hierarchy Theory," "Personal Construct Theory," "Stakeholder Theory," "Theory of Planned Behavior," and "Image Recovery Theory/Situational Crisis Communication Theory". Besides, as mentioned earlier that DI studies usually aims at solving some identified problem. Table 3 shows that research methods that are utilized by researchers can solve the problems that are identified in the respective research (i.e., multiple methods can be utilized at the same time for the same research question).

DI and authors
Among the 908 DI articles, the top five contributing authors are: Tasci Pike (2002Pike ( , 2007  were used. Furthermore, this study systematically reviews DI literature in three phases-overall analysis, advance analysis, and comparative analysis, which provides a better understanding of DI development and implications for fieldwork and future research.

 Environmrnt-Destinations-"adaptability/responsiveness"
The environment can be narrowly defined as a natural or man-made geographical environment while it can broadly include other elements such as culture and technology (Inskeep, 1991, p. 339;Mathieson & Wall, 1996, p. 3). Notably, environmental quality is regarded as a vital attribute to tourism destinations (Mihalic, 2000). As tourism is human activities which encompass interaction with environments, any environmental degradation such as severe weather condition, pollution, political turmoil, or terrorist activities can affect tourists willingness to visit the destinations and further impact the development of local tourism. Therefore, in order to perform the successful destination management, local government agencies should be responsive to environmental damage and field workers should know to cope with (resolve) the hardship.
 Environment-Tourists-"relationships building/education for sustainability" Drucker (1954) declares that the only purpose of a business is to create a customer. In order to achieve the purpose, marketing can give a business a competitive advantage in the market to communicate with consumers and to create product differentiation (Weerawardena, 2003;Kotabe et al., 2002). Given that DI is an individual's overall feeling, perception, and impression of a destination (Fakeye & Crompton, 1991;Mansfeld, 1992), environmental factors around destinations can swing tourists' impressions. If field workers provide due diligence (such as convenience, quality, and safety) in every segment of services, visitors can receive the best possible experiences. Yoon and Uysal (2005) argue that in an increasingly saturated tourism market, the success of a destination would rely on positive interaction (relationship-oriented) with customers, among tourists, and with residents in the host destination. This topic has drawn more attention from other researchers in the last several years (e.g., Yang, 2016; Stylidis, 2018).
The notion of "marketing" is literally "market + ing," and "ing" means "in progress"; therefore, marketing is the profession that deals with dynamic markets. With the rise of the experience economy and homogeneous competitive market, marketing becomes more indispensable in the tourism industry in which marketing can promote destinations to consumers/tourists. The higher the revisitation rate is, the more profits a business can make. However, the revisitation rate is highly associated with tourist's experience and levels of satisfaction and loyalty. How to increase the level of customer satisfaction? As Drucker (1973) said, "marketing aims to make selling superfluous." Marketing strategies, such as advertisement in traditional media or on the internet, can extensively increase destination exposure and attract inbound tourists to visit physical or online stores. In the store, customized products and catalogs can further promote a better image of the destination.
Taiwan has rich and diverse natural and cultural tourism resources to attract a large number of domestic and foreign travelers. However, most tourists have relatively weak and insufficient awareness of environmental protection, and often inadvertently create environmental damage, such as oil pollution, waste, the ecological impact of diving on coral reefs, and even cause an imbalance in the environmental supply chain (Chang & Katrichis, 2016, p. 796). In fact, it is foreseeable that there is an imbalance of economic growth and environmental conservation. In recent decades, "sustainability" has become popular in the tourism industry. The ultimate goal of tourism is sustainability (Huang et al., 2019). Empirical evidence shows that there is a positive correlation between the sacrifice of economic growth and environmental protection (Hedlund, 2011). In light of this, many destinations have begun to assess and apply "carrying capacity" (Lobo et al., 2013;Vousdoukas et al., 2009) to prevent over-utilization of the destination and ensure ecological and environmental sustainability. cultural background similar to their own (Jackson, 2000;Ng et al., 2007Ng et al., , 2009Yang & Wong, 2012). Smaller cultural differences give tourists a sense of confidence and comfort (Martín & del Bosque, 2008). On the other hand, curiosity can be a prime driving force that motivates some tourists. The greater the cultural distance is, the more curious a tourist is about the destination, and the more likely s/he is to choose that destination (Crompton, 1979).
Also, in the marketing, images of a country/area correlate positively with images of a product in that country/area (Dinnie, 2004). Consumers are more likely to appreciate consumption goods from a country where they have a good impression (Stepchenkova, 2015). In addition, since tourism is exposed and vulnerable to environmental impact, how dangerous/safe a destination is can influence tourist destination choices, especially when traveling overseas (Reisinger & Mavondo, 2005). People are more likely to avoid traveling to high-risk destinations (Sönmez & Graefe, 1998  DI has long been considered to be a key element of tourist decisions. Typically, positive image perceptions of a destination are more likely to attract tourists (Martins, 2015, p. 5). Pike (2008) applied Leiper's (1979) model and found that DMO plays a pivotal role in promoting a tourism destination, stabilizing the supply and demand, and maximizing tourism resources. Destination management should focus on how to quickly respond and enhance competitiveness in the changing business environments. It should carry out a defined tourism strategy and plan that can technically coordinate and integrates all of the elements of the destination mix, such as attractions, events, facilities, infrastructure, transportation, and hospitality resources (Mill & Morrison, 2012). In other words, proper operational due diligence enables the tourists to have remarkable experiences around destinations. In addition, the essence of management is the management of change (Liao & Chang, 2011, p. 259). Managers should engage with developing capacity and human talent and effectively allocating resources to achieve the organization's objectives in the context of a changing tourism environment.
The tourism and hospitality industry is a service business that involves a vast array of people, including customers and employees. Managers should work hard to understand and meet their needs. Meanwhile, technology innovations are vital for todays' competitive tourism industry. Online platforms that can boost community engagement and interactivity include social media (e.g., Facebook, IG, and Twitter) where real-time information can be constantly posted, and famous bloggers who promote destinations through individual experience and style. Once consumers are attracted to these online platforms, their trust and identification are gradually built up. Eventually, they may open to sharing their own experience and spread