Teoría de recursos y capacidades

“A hypothesis expresses a prediction of what we would expect to find if the theory proves to be sound” (Brotherton 2008: 90).

In Chapter four, the components of attitude were presented as variables of the research. The promotional advertisements of Spain used in the research are analysed according to the cognitive, affective and conative/behavioural components in order to know the influence of its attitudes, positives or negatives, towards the advertisements and brand. These hypotheses try to compare which of both campaigns used in the research is more effective to promote Spain; the author will compare both, referring to each one as the traditional campaign “Everything under the sun” and the experiential campaign “I need Spain”.

5.3.1 Cognitive Component

Van Wely and Ireland (2004) explain that the cognitive component represents the thinking part of an opinion towards an attitude object. In order to analyze the cognitive approach, the author establishes the following hypothesis:

 H1: The cognitive component of the advertisement “I need Spain” is more

positive than the advertisement “Everything under the Sun”.

To measure the effectiveness of the cognitive component, the author has used the test of memory. As mentioned above, this technique is useful to determine the impact of a message through the public´s ability to remember and to recognize it (Beerli and Martin 1999).

 H2: The traditional advertisement of Spain “Everything under the sun” has a

higher remember and recognition’s rate than the advertisement “I need Spain”.

To this variable of remember of the advertisement it is necessary to add two others: the answers of cognitive and affective character argued by Batra and Ray (1986):

54  H3: The answers generated both cognitive and affective by individuals after the

ad exposure, influence more positive in the attitude towards the advertisement “I need Spain” than the advertisement “Everything under the Sun”.

5.3.2 Affective Component

Secondly, the affective component represents the thinking part of an opinion towards an attitude object (mentioned above in Chapter four). Stout and Leckenby (1988) explain, that consumers who experience emotions, have an attitude more favourable toward the advertisement. These statements can be argued as follows:

 H4: The experiential advertisement creates in the individual an attitude toward

the ad more positive than a traditional advertisement.

It has been demonstrated that the emotional ads help to build more positive attitudes toward the advertisement than if they were informative ads (Mitchell and Olson 1981). These authors propose that a positive assessment of the ads becomes in a positive attitude toward the brand.

According to Beerli and Martin (1999), the opinion techniques are used to measure the affective component of consumer´s attitude. This technique measures directly the positive or negative opinion of the individuals towards the advertisements. This statement can be argued as follows:

 H5: The image of the advertisement “I need Spain” is more attractive for the

respondents than the image of the advertisement “Everything of the Sun”.

5.3.3 Conative Component

The third aspect refers to the conative or behavioural component, and it is related to behaviour and the purchase intention. Smith and Wortzel (1997) argue that the attitude toward the ad has a significant influence on this variable. In contrast, Lord et al. (1995) explain that the attitude toward the brand on purchase intention is higher than the attitude toward the advertisement.

55  H6: The attitude toward the advertisement generated by the ad “Everything

under the sun” influences more positively in the purchase intention of the consumer than the advertisement “I need Spain”

Therefore, the author has used other variables to compare the effectiveness of both traditional and experiential advertisements.

The destination image, as mentioned above in Chapter two, plays an essential role on consumers´ behaviour. This variable helps to create a mental picture of the destination (Alhemound and Armstrong 1996), representing the real image of the place.

 H7: The advertisement “I need Spain” is more effective to represent the image

of Spain than the advertisement “Everything under the sun”

The central purpose of all these hypotheses is to verify that experiential advertising is more effective to promote Spain's image abroad.

5.4 Secondary Research

Creswell (1994) has given a very concise definition of quantitative research as a type of research that is explaining phenomena by collecting numerical data that are analyzed using mathematically based methods, and it is useful to quantify opinions, attitudes and behaviors and find out how the population feels about a certain issue. Poynter (1993) explains that secondary research implies the compilation of existing literature. Secondary data consists on the information that has been produced by someone else for primary usage and is afterwards used by another researcher not associated with the first project (Jennings 2001). Secondary research is essential to contrast the hypothesis established at the beginning of the research, since, according to Brunt (1997) practically no research can be conducted without the benefit of references.

5.4.1 Sources

The author used different types of secondary data during this research, such as books, e- books, journals, statistics and official publications, professional data from companies and the Internet.

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The research was focused in the following topics: the tourist industry, tourism advertising, advertising effectiveness and experiential marketing. A second literature review has been conducted regarding the promotional strategies used in Spain to promote the destination abroad, in order to know the impact of these advertising campaigns in the German market.

Books and journals: Academic sources such as books, e-books, journals and e-journals in three languages (English, Spanish and German) have been used for this research. General books about the selected topics have been provided by the libraries of three different universities: Dalarna University, Heilbrönn Höchschule and Rey Juan Carlos University of Madrid. Other libraries were used by the author for the collection of secondary data Caja Madrid Library in Majadahonda (Madrid, Spain) and Lemos Library in Monforte de Lemos (Lugo, Spain). Data and articles from journals, such as Journal of Travel Research, Journal of Advertising Research, World Travel Organization, have been collected in order to get up-to-date information. According to Bell (1999) journals is a more updated source of data than books, due to the frequency of its publication.

Official publications and statistics: The author used secondary data published by official organizations such as the national tourism boards, Turespaña (Spanish NTO), the INE (Spanish Statistic Institution), the WTO and the WTTR. This data was mainly based in brochures and statistics.

Internet: Documents and news from different websites including information and statistics were very practical for the author, as this data is renewed frequently and can be accessed worldwide. Meanwhile the author was abroad, Internet has been the main channel of getting information about the topic.

Dissertations and thesis: Previous research from university students has served to the author in order to define a structure in different parts of the work, and so to find interesting bibliographic sources.

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5.5 Primary Research

According to Clark et al. (1998), primary research refers to the investigation involving the collection of original information by using an accepted methodology. Burns and Bush (2000) added that this type of research is done for the precise purpose in order to answer a specific research difficulty. The use of primary research is essential when the researcher requires information that does not exist elsewhere (Brunt 1997). Finally, Silverman (2000) considered that primary research could be divided into two types: quantitative and qualitative researches that will be explained in detail in the following section.

The author used the quantitative research for the gathering of primary data. The process of primary research includes the design and piloting of the questionnaires

5.5.1 Questionnaire Design

“A questionnaire is a printed list of questions that respondents are asked to answer” (Goddard and Melville 2004).

All of the questions presented in the questionnaire, were designed as close questions to facilitate the respondents´ task and the later analysis. The weakness of close questions is that the information is limited and the participants are sometimes forced into an answer that does not represent completely what they want to say (Veal 2006). However, the closed questions are easier to quantify than open questions if you are carrying out a large number of questionnaires (Rayner et al. 2001). According to Goddard and Melville (2004) closed questions often use a four-point scale to force a decision, while a five-point scale allows the possibility of a neutral answer. In this research, the author has chosen the five-point scale: (1) strongly disagree, (2) disagree, (3) indifference, (4) agree, and (5) strongly agree.

To measure the following variable: attitude towards the advertisement, the author used some procedures such as the opposite adjectives based on in the literature review presented below.

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Considering the attitude toward the advertisement, the analysis of earlier research that has addressed this variable (Beerli and Martí 1999; Cox and Cox 1988; Gardner 1983; Graeff 1997; Homer, 1990; Kardes, 1988; Kempf and Smith 1998; MacKenzie and Lutz 1989; MacKenzie and Spreng 1992; Ray and Batra 1994; Yi 1990), shows that the best way to analyse the consumer´s attitude towards the advertisement is through two appositive adjectives.

The advertisements presents a set of questions which contain the opposite adjectives to measure the consumer´s attitude towards the advertisement, e.g. 10 items based on Wells 1964, Madden et al. 1988; Olney et al. 1991: disgusting/nice, unattractive/attractive, not interesting/interesting, not informative/informative, unconvincing/convincing, empty of meaning/full of meaning, not important/important, unrealistic/realistic, not creative/creative, without life/full of life, difficult to understand/easy to understand; and recognition of the advertisement.

In the case of the attitude towards the ad, it was found in the studies reviewed (Beerli and Martín 1999; Cox and Cox 1988; Gardner, 1983; Hill, 1989; MacKenzie and Lutz 1989; MacKenzie and Spreng 1992; Wansink, Ray and Batra 1994; Yi, 1990) that the pairs of adjectives used to measure the liking technique is the following: I do not like anything/ I like it.

5.5.2 Sample

A total of two print advertisements of Spain, based on sun and beach, were presented to a representative sample of 122 people in Germany (65 man and 57 women) used as stimuli. The picture A belongs to the advertising campaign “Everything under the sun”, and the picture B belongs to the last advertising campaign of Spain used in the main European outbound markets with the slogan “I need Spain”.

Respondents were aged between 18 and 65+, and were selected following a quota sampling procedure, using age and whether they have visited Spain or not as quota variables.

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5.5.3 Data Collection

In the first stage of the process, the author decided to send questionnaires by e-mail, given that the universe of the sample is large and is widely spread geographically (Kothari, 2008). The author approached the respondents identifying himself as a Master student from Bournemouth University and informing them about the purpose of the survey.

The questionnaire was distributed between men and women indiscriminately. Respondents must achieve only one requirement to access the questionnaire: to be German residents in Germany. Questionnaires were sent to recipients via e-mail and the researcher received completed questionnaires. The email addresses were obtained from friends and family contacts in Germany, as well as various German people known by the author. The procedure was carried out in two phases:

1. The researcher sent the questionnaire to German contacts used to carry out this research technique.

2. The questionnaires were returned directly to the researcher.

Around 240 questionnaires were sent, a much longer number than was needed for the research due to the fact that online survey have a lower response rate than those carried out through direct contact with individuals under study. The researcher received 133 completed questionnaires of which 122 were valid. 11 were dismissed either by defects, either because the individuals under study do not complete the questionnaire correctly. The largest number of responses was received during the three days after the mailing of questionnaires, but they kept coming up to fifteen days after mailing.

The 36 questions of the questionnaire are divided in two blocks. Each of the two blocks consists of 18 similar questions to compare the results of both campaigns.

60  Questions 1 to 2: demographic information, including sex and ages.

 Questions 3: (Have you ever visited Spain?) This question allows dividing the results attending to two types of approaches; people who has visited Spain and people who has never visited Spain.

 Question 4: test of memory. This question refers to the index of remember and recognition of both advertisements.

 Question 5 to 15, and 18 to 28: these questions analyse the cognitive and affective components of the advertisements.

 Question 16 and 29: these questions refer to the purchase intention, and let to know the influence of the ads in the German market.

 Question 17 and 30: these questions refer to the “liking” technique, and it is used to compare the rate of satisfaction.

 Questions 31 to 36: these questions compare both traditional and experiential advertisements, in order to know which of them represents better the image of Spain, the type of tourism that the respondents associate to Spain, and the brand´s recognition “www.spain.info”.

5.5.4 Pilot Test

According to Clark et al. (1998) a pilot test is essential to judge how the questionnaire works in practice and to recognize any possible trouble. The author conducted a pre – test sending via-email questionnaires to 10 German people in order to test before sending the final questionnaire and so, to identify possible mistakes. In this way, some mistakes were corrected and some suggestions were implemented in order to improve the understanding of the questionnaire.

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5.6 Analysis

Rubin (1995) added that the analysis of the data collected is the final stage of the research. Two different computer programs, the Statistic Package for Social Sciences (SPSS) and Microsoft Excel, were used in order to analyse the data collected from the questionnaires conducted in the German market. All the questions from the survey were coded in SPSS before the questionnaires were conducted. After the survey process, all the data collected was typed in SPSS, and frequencies and graphics were created. Afterwards, the most important information was selected and more detailed graphics concerning this data were created using Microsoft Excel.