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Yanolja Brand Equity Index

Methodology

The Korea Destination Brand Equity Model, developed by Yanolja Research, provides a systematic framework to evaluate how international tourists perceive and emotionally respond to Korea as a travel destination. Unlike traditional visitor count metrics, this model offers a more nuanced, data-driven approach to measuring brand strength.


1. Purpose

• To measure qualitative brand strength beyond the number of inbound tourists

• To regularly track brand perception by country, city, and category

• To build a practical, decision-oriented brand equity model for use in tourism policy and marketing


2. Evaluation Framework

The model evaluates five core dimensions of Korea's destination brand equity:


    1. Brand Awareness
    2. Buzz

    3. Brand Familiarity with overall Korea tourism and major interest cities

      - Recall vs. recognition not distinguished; focus on overall awareness

      - Recall vs. recognition not distinguished; focus on overall awareness

    4. Total
      City
    1. Brand Image
    2. PosBuzz Ratio

    3. Degree of positive or negative sentiment toward “Korea tourism”

      - Brand image defined as emotional response (per KTO), not dimensionally divided

    4. Total
    1. Brand Association
    2. Buzz

    3. Level of association across detailed dimension of “Korea tourism”

      - Fundamental Components: Recategorized based on travel-related associations (KOFICE, KTO)

    4. Fundamental Components

      K-Content

      Nature

      K-Food

      Shopping

      Leisure
      Entertainment

      K-Beauty

      History Tradition

    1. Brand Quality
    2. PosBuzz Ratio

    3. Evaluation of quality across detailed dimensions of “Korea tourism”

      - Fundamental Components : same as left

      - Enabling Environment : 5 sub-dimensions based on Dedeoglu et al. (2020)

    4. Fundamental
      Components

      Same as left

      Enabling
      Environment

      Prices

      Safety
      /Hygiene

      Transportation

      Language
      /Translation

    1. Brand Loyalty
    2. PosBuzz Ratio

    3. Degree of intention to recommend Korea as a travel destination

      - Brand Loyalty : Focused on recommendation, not revisit(due to global/SNS context)

    4. Recommendation


3. Data Collection

• User-Generated Content (UGC) from social platforms in collaboration with Dxentric & Brandwatch

• Over 100 million posts filtered for Korea-related travel context

• Top 10 source markets analyzed (e.g., Japan, China, U.S., Taiwan, South East Asia)

• Data sources:

• SNS: Instagram, YouTube, Facebook, X (formerly Twitter)

• Others: blogs, forums, online reviews, news

• Collection period: Annually


4. Measurement Logic

• Buzz volume: measures brand awareness and association

• Positive word ratio (PosBuzz): measures image, quality, and loyalty

• Quality and association are further broken down into:

• 7 Fundamental Components (K-Content, K-Food, Leisure-Entertainment, History-Tradition, Nature, Shopping, K-Beauty)

• 5 Enabling Environment Factors (Prices, Safety-Hygiene, Accommodation, Transportation, Language-Translation)

• Scores are comparable by year, country, and city