thesis on city branding

City Branding: An empirical study into City branding based on infrastructure, landscape and spatial/planning in Kuala Lumpur, Dubai, Singapore and Doha

Branding upcoming cities in the middle and far east.

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Within the field of construction management & engineering are upcoming cities investigated on how they achieved economic development and how they increased the quality of life by using the phenomena of city branding as development tool. By doing so (city branding), cities hope to get a better position on the global market to attract companies (multinationals), inhabitants and tourists. In addition, also to define local urban identity for the current inhabitants.

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Understanding cities through city brands: City branding as a social and semantic network

2014, Cities

More and more towns, cities, regions, and countries are investing in branding campaigns in order to establish a reputation for themselves, and to have a competitive edge in today’s global market. In their essence, branding campaigns are places’ attempts to define themselves to target audiences. However, the literature and practice of place branding have focused on the competition of brands at the expense of exploring the relations between people, symbols, meanings, and physical characteristics of cities. Therefore, current branding measurement scales and indices used to understand the defining character- istics of places are problematic. This article first analyzes three of the prominent place branding indices: Anholt-GfK Roper City Brands Index, FutureBrand Country Brand Index, and East–West Nation Brand Perception Index. Subsequently, it proposes an analytical framework combining two network analysis methods – social and semantic – to evaluate place brands, called ‘‘Define–Measure–Visualize’’ (DMV). In order to argue for the feasibility of the proposed method, a sample dataset is created based on tweets about Boston and New York City. By introducing a consumer-centric and communications-based approach and exploring the connection between cities, people, and messages, the findings of this research can be used in understanding cities/places, measuring the success of branding campaigns, and managing future campaigns.

Related Papers

Purpose: This article argues that a robust measurement system for place branding should include an explicit definition of the concept, a roadmap for gathering and analyzing data, and a method for summarizing and reporting its findings. Current measurement scales tend to focus more on the last step, and do not necessarily consider the conceptualization of ‘place brands’ or adopt compatible research methods. Therefore, it is possible to question the validity and reliability of their findings. This research aims to overcome fundamental conceptual obstacles faced by existing place brandings scales by introducing a multi- theoretical multilevel (MTML) network analysis and semantic analysis. Design/methodology/approach: The first part of the article deconstructs three of the prominent place branding indices (Anholt-GfK Nation Brands Index, FutureBrand Country Brand Index, and East-West Nation Brand Perception Index) and argues that they do not necessarily have construct validity. Subsequently, the author proposes a two-step analysis to evaluate place brands. The initial step uses a social network analysis with an MTML approach to do audience analysis and identify main stakeholders. The second step creates a semantic map of a place’s brand. In order to argue for the feasibility of the proposed methods, a sample dataset is created based on tweets about Boston and New York City. Findings: In this article, the author adheres to the understanding of place brand as a network of associations in consumers’ minds. This is why a measurement scale should try to understand ‘who says what’ about a given place. Accordingly, brands should be solely evaluated based on mapping these associations and consumers. Therefore, a semantic network analysis, and a social network analysis should be carried out to assess a place’s brand and to identify stakeholders. Practical implications: The findings of this research could be used in analyzing place brands. It is possible to use the proposed methods in measuring success in place branding campaigns. Originality/value: This research points out an important uncertainty in the literature in terms of construct validity, and proposes a novel method to compensate for the gap in the literature. Keywords: place branding, measurement, network analysis, semantic analysis

Place Branding and Public Diplomacy

Martin de Jong

Michalis Kavaratzis studied business administration in Greece and marketing in Scotland. Since April 2003 he has been a researcher in the Urban and Regional Studies Institute (URSI) of the University of Groningen in the Netherlands, focusing on the topics of place and city marketing. His particular interest is in place and city branding and he recently commenced work on a project which will investigate branding processes in major European cities. Abstract Cities all over Europe include more and more marketing techniques and methods in their administration practice and governing philosophy. The transfer of marketing knowledge, however, to the operational environment of cities proves a cause of difficulties and misalignments, mostly due to the peculiar nature of places in general and cities in particular as marketable assets. In this paper, city branding is suggested as the appropriate way to describe and implement city marketing. City marketing application is largely dependent on the construction, communication and management of the city's image, as it is accepted that encounters with the city take place through perceptions and images. Therefore the object of city marketing is the city's image, which in turn is the starting point for developing the city's brand. The most appropriate concept to understand marketing applicability within cities is the recently developed concept of corporate branding, which with the necessary modifications is applied to cities. The core of the paper is a theoretical framework to understand the city's brand and its management, which was developed through a review of the literature on both city marketing and the corporate brand. City branding provides, on the one hand, the basis for developing policy to pursue economic development and, at the same time, it serves as a conduit for city residents to identify with their city. In this sense the relevance of and need for a framework describing and clarifying the processes involved in city branding are equally strong for facing increasing competition for resources, investment and tourism on the one hand and for addressing urgent social issues like social exclusion and cultural diversity on the other. The framework focuses on the use of city branding and its potential effects on city residents and the way residents associate with and experience their city, and it is based on a combination of city marketing measures and the components of the city's brand management.

Mihalis Kavaratzis

Journal of Place Management and Development

Andrea Lucarelli

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to offer a framework for the analysis and evaluation of city brands equity that is firmly anchored to the interdisciplinary characteristics of the city branding research domain. Design/methodology/approach – The study builds upon a database of 217 articles dealing with the phenomena of city branding retrieved from Lucarelli and Berg. Findings – City brands are understood by different scholars as being characterized by both intangible and tangible elements, properly researched adopting a mixture of different methods and endowing certain type of outcomes that concern both the more directly related image and identity of the city as well, to a larger extent, the socio-political and economical aspects. Research limitations/implications – The study is based only on published English articles in the last 20 years. Originality/value – The present paper suggests a framework that is based on the individualization of diverse city brand elements and the relations those have with the reported impact and the methodologies applied to reach this purpose. The framework can be used for both analyzing city brand equity research and practices. The paper contributes to the emerging field of city branding by offering a city brand equity framework that goes beyond the previous attempt in its interdisciplinary breath.

Journal of Intercultural Management

Margarita Išoraitė

The article analyses theoretical aspects of a city brand definition, applying cases of various brands of Lithuanian cities. A brand is any sign or symbol which helps to distinguish goods or services for one person from the goods or services of another, and which may be represented graphically. The brand can be a variety of symbols, their combination, and other visual manifestations of information, such as words, names, slogans, letters, numbers, drawings, emblems; or spatial characteristics of the product itself – its image, packaging, shape, color, color combination or a combination of all these. City development usually includes an image dimension. The common ground for this is that a well-known toponym often generates events, investments, etc. Many cities are actively positioning and promoting their strategic intentions. Often times a city brand is associated with its fight for investment, tourist numbers, or successful businesses. Objective: To scrutinize relevant theories appli...

The Place Brand Observer

Ari-Veikko Anttiroiko

Interview with Ari-Veikko Anttiroiko in The Place Brand Observer, January 2015.

Journal of Destination Marketing & Management

Henrik G Larsen

Tuğba Özbölük

Development of Web 2.0 tools has changed the ways that cities communicate and build their brands. A growing number of travelers are influenced by user generated content, presenting a number of challenges and opportunities for city branding. This chapter focuses on the use of Internet and social media as international marketing communications techniques for cities and destinations. The chapter offers insights to city branding practitioners on how online city branding is carried out and suggests that using social media is an appropriate strategy to promote cities because of its participative and interactive nature. However, it is also emphasized that city branding practitioners should evaluate social media as an opportunity to get closer to customer, instead of a mechanism to be controlled. Exploring implications for practitioners, the chapter can be regarded as an important contribution to an area which is still fairly new and unexplored. The chapter also contributes to the city branding literature by introducing the use of netnography in city branding research.

City, Territory and Architecture

Ahmadreza Shirvani Dastgerdi

City brand is a valuable asset that improves the competitive advantage of the city in the globalisation era. Relying on uniqueness and utilising various methods, cities endeavour to promote their reputation and sustainability level by attracting the capital and human resources. In the intense competition between the global cities, recognition of the factors that enhance the city's reputation will improve urban planning and management framework. This study explores how the city could obtain the reputation that it deserves through a more in-depth study of the city branding phenomenon. For this purpose, some of the city branding practices criticised using the empirical analysis method. The finding highlights that although city branding with its complex nature is an effective tool for promoting the city's reputation, residents and their priorities have an insufficient concentration in many city branding practices.

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Please note you do not have access to teaching notes, city branding: a state‐of‐the‐art review of the research domain.

Journal of Place Management and Development

ISSN : 1753-8335

Article publication date: 15 March 2011

The aim of the paper is to carry out a contemporary and concise “state‐of‐the‐art” review of the city branding research domain, in particular how scholars have approached this field of study, what aspects of city branding have been studied, what cities have been chosen, and how the studies are designed.

Design/methodology/approach

Through an iterative search in multiple literature databases, 217 qualified research studies on city branding were identified and retrieved. Those studies were examined, analyzed and categorized according to six categories: bibliographical data, methodologies used, empirical foundation, conceptual frameworks, branding elements, and reported outcomes of branding efforts.

City branding is emerging as an internationally recognized research domain characterized by a high degree of multi‐disciplinary, rapid proliferation in and between disciplines, and a somewhat fragmented theoretical foundation. On the basis of research interests, three perspectives were identified (producing, consuming, and criticizing city branding) emerging across academic disciplines

Research limitations/implications

The study is based on research articles in English, published in academic journals, which limits the international and professional scope of the study. Another limitation is the selected time period, which does not include studies prior to 1988 or later than 2009.

Originality/value

As a state‐of‐the‐art review, the main contribution of this paper is a contemporary and comprehensive overview of the field as such. A methodological contribution is the attempt to run a multi‐variate analysis of the branding elements in relation to the output and performance data reported in the studies. Another contribution is the identification of three cross‐disciplinary research perspectives in the field today.

• Brand management
• Research work

Lucarelli, A. and Olof Berg, P. (2011), "City branding: a state‐of‐the‐art review of the research domain", Journal of Place Management and Development , Vol. 4 No. 1, pp. 9-27. https://doi.org/10.1108/17538331111117133

Emerald Group Publishing Limited

Copyright © 2011, Emerald Group Publishing Limited

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City Branding: A State-of-the-art Review of the Research Domain

• Journal of Place Management and Development 4(1):9-27

• Stockholm University

Repositioning of city branding through promotional videos: the case of Ningbo

• ORIGINAL ARTICLE
• Published: 15 December 2022
• Volume 19 , pages 371–385, ( 2023 )

Cite this article

• Nancy Xiuzhi Liu   ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0002-5281-9064 1 &
• Stephen Andriano-Moore   ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0001-9686-6578 2  

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2 Citations

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Promotional video of a city with its strengths in visual and audio impacts that crystallizes the history, culture and future of it is playing an ever more important role in city branding. Against this backdrop, this study will conduct an empirical examination into such videos of Ningbo, a coastal city in Zhejiang province in China. Guided by the conceptual framework of narrative paradigm in the operationalization of repositioning in city branding in comparison with some successful cases of promotional videos, this study has found that the city’s repositioning branding strives still have many aspects to improve so that its competitive edge, uniformity in positioning, compelling story-telling and uniqueness can be enhanced and improved. Contribution to literature and innovation of the study lies in the incorporation of the method of thematic multimodal discourse analysis into city branding through analyzing visual, audio and textual effects of promotional videos. Significance of this study is that second and lower tier cities such as Ningbo home the bigger population of a country, successful promotion will set a good example for other place brandings and in turn may improve the overall competitiveness of such cities.

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Acknowledgements

This work was supported by the Ningbo Philosophy and Social Science Research Base (cultivation category), Internationalizing Ningbo's Screen Industries (ningboshi yingshi wenchuang chanye guojihua fazhan jidi) 2021–2023. Special thanks go to the three students from the School of International Communications at the University of Nottingham Ningbo China, Yangmiqi Xu, Qilin Xie and Xinyuan Sui, who helped with data collection in this project.

Funding was provided by Ningbo Philosophy and Social Science Research Base.

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Liu, N.X., Andriano-Moore, S. Repositioning of city branding through promotional videos: the case of Ningbo. Place Brand Public Dipl 19 , 371–385 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1057/s41254-022-00292-0

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Published : 15 December 2022

Issue Date : September 2023

DOI : https://doi.org/10.1057/s41254-022-00292-0

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City Branding

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The Perception of Milan as a World Fashion Capital

In the 21st century, fashion is a significant part of the creative industries and an important contributor to the economical development of cities. Moreover, the projected reputation as a fashion capital is strongly related to the potential benefits of cultural and educational tourism, increase in investment and prestige of a city. The idea of the fashion city is multidimensional, and it is difficult to present the key characteristics by which a fashion capital can be defined. The multidimensionality of the concept leaves it open for interpretation and development of specific sources of competitive advantage in this area. In fact, in many world fashion cities, public authorities have begun to give increasing significance to their own place positioning in a global hierarchical structure of fashion cities, aspiring to become number one - the fashion capital of the world (Gilbert, 2006). City boosters and planners attempt to implement branding strategies in order to enhance a city ‘fashionable’ reputation and contribute to the city’s economical development. In order to do so, they utilize various branding channels, and attempt to shape brand identity into a more recognizable brand image. The purpose of the thesis is to answer the question of what is the relationship between Milan’s anticipated identity as a world fashion city and the image of the city as fashion capital among international students (education tourists). In order to examine the effectiveness of shaping urban identity into city’s image various branding attempts initiated by the Milan City Administration will be analyzed. Among the researched branding channels are promotional events linked to fashion like Milan Fashion Week, fashion fairs, artistic and cultural events linked to fashion open to the wider public, existence of internationally renowned fashion brands and specialized retail districts.

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