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Although the place stakeholders play a key role in participatory place branding, surprisingly little interest has been shown in the people involved in participatory place branding initiatives. The purpose of this study is to explore place stakeholders’ perceptions of the meaning and scope of place branding.

This paper is based on two cases of participatory place branding, and the research design is inspired by participatory action research. The empirical material comprises observations, qualitative questionnaires and interviews.

This study identifies and describes four paradoxes in place stakeholders’ perceptions of the meaning and scope of place branding, embracing the target group (internal vs external), the objective (explore vs exploit), the stakeholders’ role (active vs passive) and the main value of place branding initiatives (process vs outcome). Furthermore, in this study, the place stakeholders’ paradoxical perceptions of place branding meant that, during the participatory processes, the authors encountered and needed to manage various opinions and behaviours, for example, “critics”, “innovators” and “relators”.

This paper contributes with a new perspective on participatory place branding. By capturing place stakeholders’ perceptions and understanding of place branding, this paper develops our knowledge and understanding of the starting point of participatory processes.

This paper aims to investigate the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on participatory place branding processes and, in particular, on multiple actors’ ability to build agency.

An in-depth qualitative inquiry of place branding processes in Cardiff (UK) was undertaken during the second wave of the COVID-19 pandemic. Semi-structured (online) interviews with 28 city representatives from the public, private and voluntary sectors are analysed using three-stage conceptual coding.

Five transitions in the meaning-making and engagement processes at the nexus of participatory place branding are identified: heightening value of the local environment; building and sharing local knowledge; embedding a sense of community into relational networks; innovating engagement channels; and blurring of roles and responsibilities. Combined, these demonstrate a cultivating place (brand) attachment and evolving logics around participation.

Transitions in actor agency require monitoring over time, drawing on additional studies, wider samples and multidisciplinary frameworks.

Local knowledge and multi-actor networks are increasingly viewed as valuable assets, providing legitimacy for those in possession of these resources and for the brand. Practitioners, policy makers and community representatives should support innovative ways to involve and learn from local actors, including those not currently active across the place brand web.

Antecedents to actor agency are investigated, highlighting that during a period of disruption actors gained legitimacy for their participation by emphasising the value attached to localities, building place (brand) attachment and drawing on blurred place branding boundaries.

Building on Kavaratzis and Hatch’s (2013) identity-based place branding model, this paper aims to explore the spatial and social dimensions of the place brand identity formation process and how residents used social media to participate in the process of shaping a city brand during a crisis.

Adopting an interpretive and social constructionist approach, this study analyses a sample of 187 short videos created and posted by Wuhan residents on the social media app Douyin during a COVID-19 lockdown. The authors read the videos as cultural texts and analysed underlying social processes in the construction of place brand identity by residents.

This study develops an adapted conceptual model of place identity formation unfolding in four sub-processes: expressing, impressing, mirroring and reflecting, and each sub-process subsumes two dimensions: the social and the spatial. In addition, this study empirically describes how residents participated in place branding processes in two ways, namely, their construction of city brand identity via communicative practice and their exertion of changes to a city brand during a crisis. The model reveals how place brands emerge and can be transformed.

This paper amplifies Kavaratzis and Hatch's (2013) identity-based place branding model by testing it in an empirical study and highlighting the social and spatial dimensions. This paper contributes to research about participatory place branding by exploring how residents participated in the place branding process. This study analysed short videos on social media, a new communication format, rather than textual narratives dominating past studies.

This study aims to propose a conceptual framework for the acceptability of city branding on social media. The conceptual framework of the acceptability of city branding is necessary to achieve a successful city brand in the social media era. It tries to develop the use of social media in city branding practices and its acceptability, especially in the areas of urban planning and development. The study also explores important issues in the use of social media and its acceptability in city branding practices.

This study was initially conducted using a literature review of relevant, recent, and trustworthy scholarly publications (books, journals, reports, and proceedings) about city branding and acceptability from the electronic database by using relevant terms and keywords to find the relevant literature. The next step was to identify the essential variable described in the literature and assess how these are connected to one another. The last step was to create a conceptual framework using the variables that were found and their interrelationships.

Social media is crucial for determining a successful model of city branding strategy. Incorporating social media in the city branding process may lead to emerging bottom-up forms of influencing the city branding process, creating better-accepted city branding from wider audiences and guaranteeing a long-term successful city brand. The results of this paper indicate that one can utilize social media user-generated content (from residents and visitors), local government-created content, peer interaction, electronic word of mouth (e-WOM), and the engagement and participation medium to understand whether city branding is accepted by stakeholders through nine dimensions of acceptability: knowledge, information diffusion, experience, attachment, congruence, behavioral intention, perceived quality, engagement, and participation.

This research outcome can be used to evaluate and extend the classical theory of the acceptability of city branding, or even the overall umbrella term of branding, in the digital age. Despite its contribution, this study is not without limitations. The conceptual framework herein is best suited to a branded city with a high social media penetration rate to better represent real-life phenomena in the offline environment; in other contexts, it presents certain reliability concerns regarding its implementation.

The conceptual framework herein is best suited to a branded city with a high social media penetration rate to better represent the real-life phenomena in the offline environment; in other contexts, it presents certain reliability concerns regarding its implementation.

This research highlight some acceptability dimensions of city branding practice and also emphasize social media platform as useful tool to understand people's opinion, attitude and behavior. Combining these two concepts of the acceptability of city branding and the use of social media provides an opportunity to achieve the goals of meaningful, authentic and resilient city branding.

The purpose of this paper is to assess the suitability of Botschen et al.’s (2017) Brand-driven Identity Development of Places (BIDP) framework to support places in developing their brand-driven identity and offering sustainable tourism models.

This paper applies design science research (DSR) to evaluate the BIDP-framework. A qualitative methodology is used, bringing together findings from four different case studies and from existing academic literature to make relevant suggestions for the improvement of the framework.

The findings indicate that the BIDP-model represents a valid artifact for the development of a brand-driven place identity, but that there is room for improvement.

This paper adopts a DSR approach in a managerial context and shows its validity for evaluating a place branding framework. Moreover, it provides implications not only for managers directly involved in place branding, who can benefit from the model assessment and its suggestions for improvement, but also for tourists and local communities, who will take advantage of more sustainable branding models that better integrate the needs of local actors.

Sectoral brands are umbrella brands created to represent all companies’ products belonging to a country’s economic industry abroad to enhance their export performance. This study aims to explore the development of a sectoral brand model through the optic of the social constructionist perspective. Besides, this study also proposes to apply the model to a sectoral brand case in the business-to-business market.

The authors have developed a systematic qualitative literature review to provide a theoretical basis for the attributes chosen to compose the social constructionist sectoral brand management (SCSBM) model. To apply the model, the authors have conducted a series of 17 in-depth semi-structured interviews with the association’s managers that constitute the sectoral brand development, the director of the branding consultancy firm and specialists on place branding.

The authors present the SCSBM model, highlighting that sectoral branding should be seen as a dynamic and continuous process with the integrated participation of all industry stakeholders. Moreover, the authors have applied the model to the Brazil Fashion System brand.

The main contribution to theory is the link between sectoral brand management and the social constructionist approach, being the first study, to the best of the authors’ knowledge, to propose this connection. SCSBM model extends previous work on sectoral brands by adopting a social constructionist view.

The SCSBM model might contribute to marketing professionals willing to develop sectoral brands across multiple economic sectors and geographies.

The study’s originality lies in developing the first model, which adopts a social constructionist approach to sectoral brands.

Drawing on the service-dominant logic and taking a multi-stakeholder brand value co-creation perspective, this paper aims to investigate whether positioning a place brand around sustainability helps or hinders stakeholders’ ability to co-create value for themselves and the brand.

This paper is based on a case study of Bristol’s city branding following its award of European Green Capital, drawing on 29 in-depth interviews with key informants from multiple stakeholder groups. These interviews are supported by secondary material and field observations.

The findings evidence a “tale of two cities”. When sustainability is used as a positioning device, tensions are identified across three elements of brand co-creation: brand meanings; extraordinary versus mundane brand performances; and empowerment and disempowerment in branding governance. These tensions create stakeholder experiences of both engagement and estrangement.

This paper is based on one case study and evaluates face-to-face stakeholder interactions. Future research could access further stakeholders, across multiple cities and also examine their digital engagement.

Positioning a brand as sustainable (i.e. green) requires strong commitment to other ethical principles in practice. Brand practitioners and marketers may benefit from advancing stakeholders’ everyday brand performances to reduce disillusionment.

Rallying around virtuous associations, i.e. sustainability, does not in itself facilitate the generation of value for stakeholders and the brand, but instead can illuminate power imbalances and tensions in stakeholder interactions that result in a co-destruction of value.

This paper aims to develop a cross-border regional brand management model to help enhance cooperation for developing such localities. It analyzed its applicability in the Brazil–Argentina and Italy–Austria cross-border regions comprising several cities.

A systematic literature review was conducted to obtain a theoretical basis and select elements for creating the cross-border regional brand management (CRBM) model. To apply the model, in-depth interviews were conducted with 19 specialists of different nationalities and distinct expertise on cross-border governance and regional branding. In addition, to validate the proposed model, a focus group was carried out, and specialists were consulted using forms, providing 22 additional opinions.

The results show good managerial practices and gaps that must be overcome to create and manage the brands from the two regions analyzed.

The theoretical contributions consist in extending the literature in place branding by presenting the first CRBM model and the conceptual explanation of each of the model's elements.

The study's practical implications occur through the suggestion of good management practices for the studied localities arising from the applicability of the CRBM model. Furthermore, it is expected that the model developed can be applied in other locations, bringing practical contributions to the management and creation of cross-border regional brands in other countries.

This study presents the first CRBM model and its applicability to two cross-border regions.

This study aims to propose resident-based brand equity models on green, creative and smart development themes through a multi-sample telephone survey on Hong Kong residents (n = 751).

This research adopted a quantitative approach with a round of questionnaire-based survey carried out anonymously on adult citizens who have stayed in Hong Kong for more than one year. Telephone survey was performed by a professional survey research centre with trained interviewers between May and July 2022.

The study identifies the magnitude of these city brand equity attributes and reconfigured their composition under separate samples of Hong Kong residents. The results reveal the relatively stronger brand equity for developing Hong Kong as a smart city brand compared with green and creative branding.

The research findings might carry a major limitation of varied interpretations and stereotypes of each city theme (green, creative and smart) by local residents. To minimize the expected bias, two core questions were added to provide respondents with information on each theme before the main survey questions. The questions’ wording was also simplified to ensure the constraint and inconsistency of layman effect.

The common attributes across the themes, including distinctiveness, uniqueness, confidence, positive image, liveability, long-term residence, feature familiarity and top-of-mind, indicate the most prominent aspects of brand equity formation and enhancement. Since urban sustainability does not follow a single path of strategies and infrastructure development, city brand process should also follow a selective approach, which clearly identifies a multiplicity of local interests that could create the best outcomes and the strongest brand equity for the city.

The factor allocation and regression analysis elucidate different configurations of the determining factors with a three-factor model for green city brand equity and two-factor models for the other ones. The findings encore some previous studies supporting the differentiation between common attributes and distinctive attributes, and the overlapping approach to unleash the strongest integration of attributes of brand equity.

The purpose of this introductory paper is to outline the theme of – and introduces the papers comprising – this special issue on post-Covid place marketing.

A brief literature review outlines some of the impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic on places and also for place-bound and spatially oriented industry sectors (particularly retailing and tourism and hospitality, which are often the focus of place marketing initiatives) before describing the papers constituting the special issue.

The impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic on places are identified, relating to both economic and more phenomenologically oriented impacts, and the implications for place resilience are considered. The papers comprising the special issue are grouped into two main themes relating to the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on retailing and the impact of the pandemic on place marketing processes.

Notwithstanding the burgeoning literature on the COVID-19 pandemic and its impacts, the papers comprising this special issue focus on specific place-oriented marketing (and retailing) implications, providing potential avenues for future research.