Analyzing the marketing impacts of metaverse travels: the role of travel experience, destination attitude, perceived quality, and avatar image identification

Abstract

This study aims to identify the nature of metaverse travel experiences and analyze how they influence attitudes toward destinations, their impact on perceived travel-product quality, and travel-product purchase intentions promoted within the metaverse. The findings revealed that metaverse travel experiences could be categorized into emotional, sensory, utilitarian, and social experiences, and all except social experiences demonstrated significant marketing effects. Additionally, this study demonstrates that higher levels of identification with metaverse avatar images lead to increased marketing effects. This study is one of the first to empirically analyze the tourism marketing effects of the metaverse, offering both theoretical and practical implications.