Place overbranding and how to prevent it: Combining two conceptual and methodological approaches
Kirill Rozhkov is a Professor at the Faculty of Business and Management in the Higher School of Economics, Moscow, Russia. He is also a Fellow of the Institute of Place Management (Manchester, UK). His research interests lay in place marketing, place management and place branding. Kirill Rozhkov is an experienced researcher who wrote up to 70 scientific papers in different international and Russian journals on economics and management. Beside research, Prof Rozhkov teaches courses “Marketing-management” and “Place marketing and branding” for master students at Management faculty. He also provides supervisor services for graduate students.
Konstantin Khomutskii (PhD in Linguistics) is an Associate Professor at the National Research University Higher School of Economics. His areas of research interests include cognitive linguistics, sociolinguistics, pragmatics, semantics and conceptualization, place marketing and branding. He is currently involved into a number of international cross-disciplinary projects, which deal with application of linguistic methods to various studies in marketing, branding and psychology.
Robert Romanowski is an Associate Professor at The Poznań University of Economics and Business, Coordinator of Innovation Management – Master Study Programme at Faculty of Management, Department of Commerce and Marketing, Poland. He is the author and co-author of six monographs and over 80 papers on local development, place marketing and local and regional innovation systems including creating the social capital for economy, modern consumption trends and consumer ethnocentrism. He is an expert of innovation policy for Marshal Office of the Wielkopolska Region in Poznań for over 12 years. He is a Consultant in local governance policy and strategic management policy for local and regional institutions and authorities and a co-author of the reports on the potential for the development of innovative environment entities.
Norberto Muniz-Martinez is a PhD Doctor of Economics and Business Studies; Associate Professor of Marketing at the University of Leon, Spain; Master Science of Transport and Distribution Management, University of Central England (Birmingham, England); Diploma in European Union and Foreign Trade by the Polytechnic University of Madrid (Spain). Has published papers in academic journals and books; lecturing internationally, with stays at universities and institutions from Europe, the USA and Asia. He has taught courses on new trends in tourism in different cities of Mexico and Colombia and doctoral courses in Brazil and Venezuela. He is a Visiting Professor at the Asia-Europe Institute, University of Malaya (Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia); Universidad de Medellín (Colombia); and cooperating with Stockholm University Business School (Sweden). He has conducted international research, such as a European Union project with the cities of Leipzig (Germany), Bologna (Italy), Ljubljana (Slovenia) and León (Spain); he has also cooperated with Medellin (Colombia) and Kuala Lumpur (Malaysia). He is also the founding member and Vice-president of a Latin American association on Place Marketing and Urban Development, promoting exchange of academic knowledge and practices. Norberto’s areas of research are city marketing and place branding, strategic marketing and international retailing, new trends on tourism (eco-tourism and adventure travelling) and new theory of Marketing–Service Dominant Logic.
ISSN: 1352-2752
Article publication date: 19 March 2020
Issue publication date: 11 December 2020
Abstract
Purpose
This paper aims to present concepts and tools for developing place branding that protects places from overbranding, redundant promotion and excessive tourism.
Design/methodology/approach
The concept of a product-based place brand that reflects local ways of life and local identities was introduced. A combination of projective, typological and narrative methods was applied. Three focus groups composed of future place managers were held in three countries (N = 27) to develop place brand vocabularies and typologies of verbal characteristics of abstract places as products for internal users (residents).
Findings
In most cases, the place brand vocabularies were consistent and compatible within each abstract type and were unique (mutually exclusive) between the types. The vocabularies contained both detailed and more generalized elements. For each place, short formulations of the general concept were found. Each brand vocabulary reflected the institutional, socio-psychological, cultural, historical and geographic differences of the countries involved in the research.
Originality/value
A conceptual and methodological framework for creating place brand vocabularies is offered, and it describes the close relationship between multiple internal brand attributes and their concise expressions appropriate for communication and high differentiation among brand attributes that facilitate the recognition of branded places by target and non-target audiences. The framework is applicable for designing verbal attributes of place brands for specific places to avoid overbranding effects.
Keywords
Acknowledgements
This work is an output of a research project implemented as part of the Research Program of the Faculty of Business and Management at National Research University – Higher School of Economics.
Citation
Rozhkov, K., Khomutskii, K., Romanowski, R. and Muniz-Martinez, N. (2020), "Place overbranding and how to prevent it: Combining two conceptual and methodological approaches", Qualitative Market Research, Vol. 23 No. 4, pp. 979-999. https://doi.org/10.1108/QMR-12-2017-0180
Publisher
:Emerald Publishing Limited
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