Search results

Danang – a heritage gateway, a socioeconomic urban of Central Vietnam – has been known as a livable city, a fantastic destination and a leading position in the Provincial Competitive Index. Since branding Danang appears to be unfocused, it is suggested that the city follow a strategy to meet the shared expectations of stakeholders instead of trying to create separate images toward different audiences. The paper aims to discuss these issues.

Therefore, this study selects the bottom-up approach from the viewpoint of Danang students whose requirement is consistent with those of investors, citizens and tourists.

The finding represents the initial associations of students about Danang as a livable, friendly, dynamic, modern coastal city of tourism and development with many opportunities, potential, attraction, integration and hometown feel. These salient images are exceeded from city characteristics, such as natural endowment, leisure places, beautiful scenes, diverse cuisine, peaceful, suitable living environment, orderly traffic, infrastructure and local people. Besides, crowded caused by development and population growth leads to an unpleasant feeling about narrow spaces but can be overwhelmed by the bustle. Although the result shows the success of Danang in communication, it also figures out the loss of the livable image in local students’ minds.

Hence, Danang must boost the positive effects of tourism development and limit its negative side. University–city cooperation through co-branding strategies can be considered a solution.

The study contributes not only to branding Danang but also to the literature because this is the first complete application of the Zaltman metaphor elicitation technique in city branding.

The purpose of this paper is to address the contemporary interest in participatory destination branding. Because of a lack of empirical and evaluative studies on this form of branding, the current case study examines a volunteer resident ambassador program, which began as part of Aarhus, Denmark’s year as a European City of Culture in 2017, and has become permanent because of its success.

The case study is based on official document analyses, participant observations of program activities, and interviews with volunteer program managers and volunteers who greet cruise ship tourists.

Findings indicate that while the two managers and the volunteers all report on three volunteer roles – personal hosts, place promoters and providers of information – they prioritize and understand the roles differently. Similarly, the volunteers’ encounters with visitors are all unique, and this inevitably results in the conveyance of unruly and incidental destination images.

This unruliness is not necessarily problematic: despite the wide-spread interest in the management of participative branding initiatives, it is seen to be the lack of explicit brand-centered management that fosters the program’s positive outcomes, including authentic and pleasant interactions between volunteers and tourists, which, in turn, result in positive attitudes amongst tourists toward their visit.

This study discovers that positive participatory destination branding outcomes depend on managers respecting the ambassadors’ coveted autonomy, and letting go of control of a destination brand. Because of the growing hostility toward mass tourism in cities internationally, it is also noted that a resident ambassador program’s success is expected to depend on residents’ positive attitudes toward tourists.

To date, the importance of smaller, local community events in the place branding process has been overlooked in the place branding and event studies literature – yet they are recognised as a means of increasing the attractiveness of a place for residents, through building a sense of community and contributing to quality of life. The purpose of this paper is to make clear the contribution of community event narratives to place branding.

A qualitative approach was adopted. The public narratives of a portfolio of 14 community events (from event websites, press releases and media discourse, local government strategic policy documents) were examined. An inductive thematic analysis was conducted, and a visual framework for analysing and discussing the findings was created.

Community event narratives provide a useful resource that could be drawn upon by place branding practitioners to reach potential new residents who share similar ideals as local residents. The findings from this study demonstrate that local community event narratives do indeed tell “stories about who we are”.

This paper has implications for place branding initiatives seeking to attract new residents, particularly where there is a sense of fear and resistance from residents about “outsiders” moving in.

This paper presents an alternative model to the traditional city branding campaigns that seek to attract new residents, in the form of a values-based event-led branding strategy that may be more appropriate and compatible with local stakeholder goals.

Worldwide approximately 200 national economies are competing in the destination market. In 2006, global government and capital expenditure exceeded US$1,480 billion making destination branding an important concept that still remains fragmented and unplanned. Dubai, an emirate of the UAE in the Middle East has been chosen as a case study to explain some elements of successful destination branding. This paper aims to apply a framework developed by Balakrishnan to explain areas of caution when competing in an international market where success is also partially dependent on the macro‐environment.

The framework was developed by reviewing literature on destination, place, corporate, product portfolio and service branding. The framework was tested using case study methodology. Secondary research was primarily used to develop the case.

There is a strong fit with the model suggesting that destinations can use this as a basis for continuity in strategy even as governments change. Based on the analysis and review; a checklist for destination branding strategy was recommended.

Since, this study depends on secondary research there is some limitations as data in this region is not easily available.

Destination branding differs in challenges vis‐à‐vis product and service branding. This paper depicts steps essential for creating a successful branding strategy which can be applied in a real world context to maximize returns for the destination.

The purpose of this paper is to evaluate the applicability of the strategic place brand-management model (SPBM) for a product-place co-branding context, focussing on Sri Lanka’s tea industry.

Conducted as an exploratory case study, pattern matching and explanation building methods are employed to analyse data from secondary sources such as archival data and documentation.

Strategic components of place branding in SPBM are applicable for product-place co-branding, as evidenced in Sri Lanka’s tea industry, although key strategies appear to be reactive rather than proactive in this context.

The findings provide reassuring guidance to practitioners on applying strategic place branding models in product-place co-branding settings, given the unique risks associated with product-place co-branding.

Given the novelty of and the need to advance knowledge on product-place co-branding as a component of place branding, this study extends extant literature on the use of SPBM in a successful product-place co-branding setting. Additionally, it extends the value of place branding concepts for industries other than popularly studied tourism.

This study aims to explore the visual social media (SM) (Instagram) communication and the visual characteristics of smart tourism destination (STD) communication from destination marketing/management organizations (DMOs) and user-generated content (UGC) perspectives, which refer to projected image and perceived image, respectively.

Three DMO official accounts of STDs (Helsinki, Gothenburg and Lyon) and corresponding official hashtags were selected for the sample and total 6,000 post data (1,000 × 6) were retrieved from Instagram. Visual communication content was examined with a netnographic design over a proposed four-level visual content framework using corresponding methodological approaches (thematic analysis, visual analysis, object detection and text mining) for each level.

Among the eight emerging themes dominating the images, communication of smart elements conveys far less than expected textual and visual signals from DMOs despite their smart status, and in turn, from UGC as well. UGC revealed three extra image themes regardless of smartness perception. DMOs tend to project and give voice to their standard metropolitan areas and neighborhoods while UGCs focus on food-related and emotional elements. The findings show a partial overlap between DMOs and UGCs, revealing discrepancies in objects contained in visuals, hashtags and emojis. Additionally, as a rare attempt, the proposed framework for visual content analysis showed the importance of integrated methods to investigate visual content effectively.

The number of attributes in visual analysis and focusing on the observed elements in text content (text, hashtags and emojis) are the limitations of the study in terms of methodology.

Apart from the multiple integrated methods used over a netnographic design, this study differs from existing SM and smart destinations intersection literature by attempting to fill a gap in focusing on and exploring visual SM communication, which is scarce in tourism context, for the contents generated by DMOs and users.

本研究旨在探讨从目的地营销管理组织（DMO）和用户生成的内容（UGC）获取的视觉社交网站传播（instagram）以及智慧旅游目的地的视觉特征。这两个角度在本文中分别命名为投射形象和感知形象。

本文收集了三个智慧旅游目的地（赫尔辛基、哥德堡、里昂）的DMO官方账号及其对应的官方标签数据, 其中从Instagram获取了一共6000个帖子（1000 x 6）。视觉传播内容是通过网络民族志设计进行分析的, 该设计采用四层视觉内容框架, 每一层使用相应的方法, 包括主题分析、视觉分析、目标检测、文本挖掘。

在8个新兴的主导形象中, 智慧元素, 尽管是智能的, 但其传达的信息远不如预期的来自DMO的文本和视觉信号, 同样, 也不如来自UGC的信息。无论智慧感知程度如何, UGC显示了3个额外的形象。DMO倾向于展现和表达目的地标准的大都会地区及其临近社区, 而UGC专注于与食物相关的和情感的元素。我们的研究显示了DMO和UGC内容的部分重叠, 但揭示了两者在图像、标签和表情符号中包含对象的差异。此外, 作为一个少有的尝试, 我们提出的视觉内容分析框架展示了集成方法对有效研究视觉内容的重要性。

从方法上来说, 视觉分析中属性的数量和在文本语境中对观察元素的关注是本研究的局限性

除了在网络民族志设计中使用多个集成方法,本文和以往社交媒体和智慧目的地交互文献的区别还体现在关注和探索DMO和UGC生成内容的视觉社交媒体沟通, 这类研究旅游研究情境下是少见的。

The purpose of this paper is to present a conceptual framework that serves as: a potential how‐to guide for place managers; an evolution of place branding strategy; a cautionary tale about place brands developed without stakeholder involvement; and a way to open up the theory space to arrive at a potentially ideal marketing mix. The framework reveals consequences of relying on imagery with little connection to the place's reality. Place brands developed without these characteristics could lead to auto‐communication, which could affect the organization‐public relationship by stunting genuine organization learning and simulating meaningful two‐way dialogue.

A conceptual framework was developed using Qualitative Media Analysis to explore several constructs – market‐based models of governance, public relations models, Baudrillard's phases of the image, and six promotional tactics cities are used to promote the place.

Based on the concepts employed, it is argued that cities need to be cognizant of after effects of place brands, as the organization‐public relationship might be fractured.

A limitation might come from theories selected, but implications for place branding academics and practitioners are potentially great. Further research questions are presented.

Practitioners could use the piece as a how‐to guide when developing a place marketing strategy, as well as become cognizant of when auto‐communication could take place based on the communications strategies employed.

The paper develops a workable tool for place marketers while bringing attention to an area not often explored, be it theoretically and empirically, which is the after effects of place marketing.

This chapter explores the concept of branding in a contemporary competitive arena of places. The multi-dimensional interpretations of places offer a variety of possibilities to better understand the true essence of destination branding. One of the common interpretations of places is through the study of their images, as destination branding requires a thorough understanding of destination image. The important foundation and relation of destination image are specified and explained. The notion of destination branding has evolved from the fields of marketing and urban studies and has become a cross-disciplinary research area. Thus, the researchers explain that destination branding as well as ‘place branding’ are dynamic concepts that are being continuously being explored in academia for the benefit of practitioners in travel and tourism. This chapter suggests that the use of brand equity is also one of the frontier areas of study in ‘place branding’ as it emphasises the need to thematise destinations (e.g. for their historical heritage, cultural value, natural attractions, etc.) and places for residence (e.g. as green cities, creative cities, smart cities, etc.).

The present chapter aims to assess how digital transformation impacts current trends in city branding, to analyze the role of digital communication in the branding of selected cities, and to compare the level of exploitation of digital communication for city branding between European and Slovak cities. We conducted empirical research in several phases, and the overall sample consists of 155 cities in Europe and Slovakia. The results of our research showed that European and Slovak cities use to some extent all the investigated tools of digital marketing communication in city branding with a dominant position of social media, both in terms of exploitation and importance for city branding in European and Slovak cities. European cities score significantly better than Slovak cities in all elements of the City Brand Hexagon, as well as in the overall city brand index. Therefore, city branding strategies in the best European cities can serve as a good practice example or inspiration for Slovak cities. Cities with lower rankings and scores on city branding should focus on strengthening their city branding or strengthening their digital communication. The possible trajectory is also the concerted strategy for the branding of the city and its digital communication.