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Abstract
In a stimulus-saturated and highly competitive global tourism environment, understanding how destination brands impact travelers becomes essential for differentiating and positioning emerging territories. This study addresses this issue by applying neuromarketing tools to analyze the effectiveness of the Riobamba (Ecuador) destination brand, with an emphasis on its physical and digital promotional stimuli. The central objective is to evaluate the brand's neurocognitive performance in terms of attention, emotion, and memory, using a quantitative approach with an exploratory experimental design. A multimodal protocol was implemented with neurophysiological measurements (high-density EEG), oculometric measurements (precision eye tracking), and behavioral tasks (affective priming, implicit memory tests, and semantic scales), applied to a sample of 50 tourists. The stimuli were presented under controlled conditions to capture attentional (P1), affective (prefrontal gamma power), and memory (P300, theta-gamma synchronization) correlates. The results reveal significant deficiencies in attentional and emotional activation in response to brand stimuli. The Riobamba logo generated low levels of eye fixation (TTFF = 4.2 s) and reduced P1 component amplitudes (1.8 ?V), while emotional activation was insufficient (z = -1.24). Furthermore, brand recognition was below chance (d' = -0.31), indicating weak memory encoding. It is concluded that the Riobamba destination brand does not meet the minimum neurocognitive thresholds for effective positioning, and its redesign is recommended based on applied neuroscientific evidence.
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