Tourism involves different organizations with different aims, such as public or private sectors nongovernmental or associations and even communities. Even in the context of marketing concerns, more ...specifically in the promotion and branding of a location, the scenario of various stakeholders is evident (e.g. a city, a region or a country). Countries, cities, and areas that serve as tourist destinations compete with one another to draw visitors, residents, and business investment.
This article attempts to ‘rethink’ place brands after examining in detail how people form them in their minds. The article starts with a very brief account of the place branding literature to provide ...the necessary background and goes on to identify what we see as a shortcoming in current understanding of the place brand: the dominant idea that brands are formed as sums of mental associations. The article attempts to take current understanding of place brands further by going beyond associations and adding a missing element: the interactions between those associations. We propose a rethinking of place brands based on two pillars: first we incorporate more geographical understanding into place branding and, second, we outline a process that allows place elements and placebased associations to combine and form the place brand. The place brand formation process starts when people use place-making elements (materiality, practices, institutions and representations) to form mental associations with the place. These associations are not static but evolve and change over time as they interact with each other on several dimensions. These interactions constitute the way in which the place brand is formed. The argumentation leads to a novel conceptualization of the role of place branding in the above processes. The practical applicability and implications of the proposed rethinking of place brands suggested here are explored in detail through the examination of the branding process followed recently in Bogotá, Colombia, where our approach to place branding has found practical application.
Place Branding and Local Development Paola de Salvo; Marco Pizzi; Pablo Gómez Iniesta ...
Fuori luogo (Online),
12/2022, Letnik:
13, Številka:
3
Journal Article
This study investigates the relationships among institutionalized place branding strategy, interfirm trust, and place branding performance. Findings indicate that each of the institutionalized place ...branding strategies (regulatory, normative, and cultural-cognitive) has positive effects on interfirm trust. The relative predictability of these dimensions on interfirm trust also falls into a particular order: Normative is most predictable, followed by cultural-cognitive, then regulatory. Cultural-cognitive strategy can not only directly drive interfirm trust but also negatively moderate the effects of regulatory and normative strategies on interfirm trust. Finally, interfirm trust has a positive effect on place branding performance. These results altogether provide valuable insights into the effect of institutionalized place branding strategies on interfirm trust, which encourages firms to be collaboratively involved in place branding strategies.
The relationship between food and identity is long-standing, and it has been proficiently studies by social scientists in a variety of fields and disciplines. This article wants to contribute to this ...literature, with an original thematic and methodological approach. By showing the key elements that gastronomic place-branding and (gastro)populist styles of communication share, this article builds bridges between the two disciplines. With (gastro)populism is intended the exploitation of food products as performed by politicians to fuel populist messages. This empirical study provides a visual analysis of the practices of gastropopulism as performed on Instagram by two leaders of right-wing, populist parties: Matteo Salvini and Giorgia Meloni. First, I detail some key elements that make food so central in place branding, and in the establishment of collective identities. Second, I explain its strict connection to politics and introduce the concept of gastropopulism. Third, I provide some key elements useful to better understand the Italian political landscape. Fourth, I describe the approach I developed to disentangle the leaders’ communicational strategies and how they become tied to gastronomies. In a nutshell, I grounded my methods in some of the most influential works on visual analysis to find the dominant elements in the analysed images, and the recurring topics in the attached texts. Subsequently, I use the results emerged from this approach to focus on some specific instances of gastropopulism, where food politics and gastronomic place-branding contaminate each other. The main contention of this article is that when high-visibility characters, like national party leaders, implement gastronomy in their communication strategies, they can influence the public perception of food as an identarian element. Thus, gastronomic place-branding actors need to confront themselves with the association that gastropopulists make between the local identities connected to cuisines and a set of right-wing, populist values.
Today it is commonly known that the most effective place branding initiatives are those involving a wide range of place stakeholders. However, few empirical studies show how this can be carried out ...in practice and little is known about how residents experience participating in place branding initiatives. Design Thinking uses divergent and convergent thinking, creativity, visualization and prototyping to develop ideas and solutions. Inspired by participatory action research, the current study develops and evaluates a framework inspired by Design Thinking for how stakeholders can be involved in a place branding process and value the outcome of such an approach. Observations are complemented by qualitative questionnaires capturing the stakeholders’ perceptions and interviews with public officials. The study shows that Design Thinking facilitates an inclusive place branding process, as the framework developed, titled “The Inclusive Place Diamond”, encourages
inclusion
and strengthens the sense of
meaning making
at the same time as it reinforces a broad sense of
ownership
. Still,
conflicting images
complicate the process and some resistance towards losing power is observed. One of the key insights is that a process inspired by Design Thinking entails that the
implementation
of the place brand starts already when stakeholders are invited to the process and continues as a key feature of the evolving process.
Using an economic development context, this study tests a portion of the revised B2B communication effects model, which added source credibility as an antecedent to message processing. This ...exploratory study examines how the perceived credibility of a nation brand influences message persuasiveness under varying levels of argument quality and issue involvement. Applying dimensions of source credibility to place advertising, the research uses an online, between-subjects experiment with a sample of site-selection managers to measure their responses to foreign direct investment seeking advertisements. In nearly all conditions, results suggest source credibility by itself has a stronger influence over message persuasiveness than either argument quality or involvement.
The literature and practice of place promotion, place marketing and place branding lack a common understanding of what these three concepts mean and through what kind of policies they can be ...implemented. Although scholars have provided several theoretical frameworks and definitions, both scholars and practitioners (advisors, civil servants, public and private stakeholders, and politicians) often use them synonymously. This paper argues that recent developments in both theory and practice – with respect to place promotion, place marketing and place branding – provide an opportunity to address this conceptual confusion. In the academic debate, a common understanding is slowly emerging and in practice, a more integral approach is gaining ground. To contribute to these advances, we present the outline of a framework to help distinguish between place promotion, place marketing and place branding, along with a discussion on why we believe these differences (should) matter to practitioners.
•A classification of place promotion, place marketing, and place branding respectively as instruments for urban policy;•A conceptual reframing, highlighting and incorporating the differences between these three instruments;•Insights into how the current conceptual confusion causes asymmetries in both theory and practice.
The paper examines the participation of student media in inclusive place branding. Today, the territory is no longer viewed as a specific product, but as the place of interaction between different ...parties (authorities, businesses, residents, etc.). Inclusive place branding considers residents not just as brand ambassadors, but also as brand co-creators. This branding practice is consistent with increasing complexity of the city communication. Media and the variety of symbolic systems do not only construct the reality of the city, but also transmit socio-cultural experiences to the urban community. Not only various institutions (including official media), but also ordinary people participate in the symbolic exchange in the contemporary digital environment. The article presents the results of the study of 53 regular media projects created by students in 25 universities in 15 Russian cities. A content analysis of publications according to the degree of connection to the life of the territory (hyperlocal, local, regional, national themes) has shown that student media had already been involved in inclusive place branding practices.
Medical tourism is an estimated $100 billion dollar industry. Despite the increasing number of people, companies and countries involved in medical tourism, we know very little about the key drivers ...and how countries are perceived as medical tourism destinations. The purpose of this paper is to present the Medical Tourism Index, a new type of country-based performance measure to assess the attractiveness of a country as a medical tourist destination. We followed a rigorous multi-steps scale development procedure by using four empirical studies based on 4995 respondents. The MTI is a multidimensional construct with 4 dimensions (country, tourism, medical costs, medical facility and services) with 34 underlying items. Our results show the MTI allows to measure meaningful differences between countries, not only on an aggregated level but also on each sub-indexes. It provides a useful tool for the various stakeholders to measure and manage their medical tourism destination brand.
•The MTI is a new type of country-based performance measure to assess the attractiveness of a country.•The MTI is multi-dimensional construct with 4 dimensions and 34 underlying items.•The MTI allows to measure meaningful differences between countries.•The MTI is a useful tool for various stakeholders to measure and manage their medical tourism brand.
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