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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.

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

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.

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.

The purpose of this paper is to contribute to our understanding of the underlying rationale for why companies participate in mega‐events in general, and in mega‐events in emerging economies – such as the 2010 Shanghai Expo – in particular. Of particular interest are the ways that companies use an event to advance their own purposes, and how experiences are created that use aspects of an event setting such as Expo 2010.

The study is based on a participatory, ethnographic and longitudinal field study focusing on the VIP section of the Swedish Pavilion at the Shanghai World Expo, using additional data from other national pavilions and respondents with insight into Expo 2010 and its organization.

The study indicates that even though companies operationally used the World Expo and the VIP section in many different ways, an underlying element appears to be to use the event for the “practice of communification”.

The study provides practitioners with a conceptual framework and tools to manage the co‐creation process of experiences at events. This is done by supplying an empirical example from World Expo 2010 and the VIP area of the Swedish pavilion. This is a needed addition to the current knowledge on how customers engage in co‐creation of experiences and how companies manage the co‐creation process.

The “communification” concept is used to denote the simultaneous building of community while communicating business‐related issues to strengthen and build relationships with customers over time, with exclusivity and co‐creation of experiences as important components.

The establishment of new plants in greenfield sites is a strategic organisational initiative providing the opportunity to develop alternative systems of staff values and beliefs which may be more appropriate for capitalising on external product market opportunities. Explores whether an alternative organisational culture can be established at a greenfield site within a New Zealand food processing plant. This case organisation utilised the provisions of the Employment Contracts Act 1991 to establish alternative employment conditions in the greenfield site to those of its brownfield site. A comparative analysis was made utilising quantitative organisational culture data from Human Synergistic’s Organisation Culture Inventory. The data reveal the similarities and differences between the greenfield and brownfield sites and provide the basis for discussion of whether culture can be managed through the mechanism of a greenfield site. Critical elements in creating a desired culture are identified.

This research measured and compared the brand identity of Kentucky Fried Chicken (KFC) in China and the United States. Brand identity was defined as the customer impressions of four different KFC identity elements – properties, products, presentations, and publications. A survey of young consumers in the two countries (n = 795), showed that the Chinese respondents were more apt to eat within KFC restaurants, and spend more time doing so, than the Americans. The Chinese also had much more positive impressions of KFC than their US counterparts. Brand identity impressions were correlated with overall customer satisfaction and with future patronage intentions for both groups, but much more so for the Americans. These findings support a model where differences in cultural frames of reference lead consumers to actively localize the brand identity of this nominally globalized product.

The purpose of this paper is to develop and test a concept of auditor as consigliere in family firms, that captures additional functions to monitoring, those of advice, mediating, and conveying.

The concept is tested through a survey conducted on 309 Swedish auditors.

The data indicate that the consigliere role is generally not emphasized, indicating that auditors primarily perform the monitoring role of the audit. However, the authors do find indications of the auditor performing the consigliere role, through performing the advisory and mediating functions and, to a smaller degree, the conveying function.

The survey is limited in response rate and in separating governance situations from consigliere functions.

With reservation for professional independence, the auditor as consigliere could be part of the governance of the family firm, but should be trained for this activity.

Regulators should pay attention to the consigliere role when, for example, stipulating compulsory rotation of auditors.

The paper shows that the auditor is more than a monitor in family firms. The consigliere role, even if not at all dominating, has to be considered, at least in family firms.

The aim of the present study is to add to the existing research on online city branding by studying how metropolitan cities are internationally positioned using the internet and online branding. The focus is on objectives and strategies, method and expression (including five illustrations), and challenges in online city branding.

The article relies on a single-case study approach, using the Chinese city of Chengdu as a case and illustration. Methods used are interviews, observations and documentation (including online material).

The study illustrates how Chengdu uses online city branding in its international positioning. Chengdu's online branding is influenced by certain imagery, as well as challenges. Collaboration and endorsement crystalize as central elements in Chengdu's online city branding.

This article and study can be seen as an important element in broadening the understanding for online city branding to international audiences.

The study offers insights to practitioners on how online city branding is carried out in a Chinese context and in the city of Chengdu.

The study can be regarded as an important contribution to an area of practice and research which still is fairly new and unexplored, and an area that hitherto has not been well covered in the international literature.

Recent research has shown that the country-of-origin (COO) effect – the influence on consumers’ attitudes and purchase behavior derived from a brand’s perceived association with a country – is inextricably linked to consumer perception. The purpose of this paper is to examine this shift by considering origin as a characteristic derived from perceived association and also by proposing that this association varies by degree, rather than simply acting as a binary attribute in its effect on consumer attitudes.

Data from a test series in which respondents (n=100) rated 38 brand-country pairs were put to split-half multi-group analysis tests to capture the moderating influence of association strength (AS) on several facets of country image (CI) simultaneously.

AS is a variable that exerts a moderating influence on how different dimensions of CI influence consumers’ evaluation of brands.

The findings indicate that origin, as a characteristic, should be considered an association that is variable by degree and not as dichotomous. The implications of such a shift are broad, not only for the theoretical understanding of the COO effect but also for marketing and brand management practice. Accounting for AS allows for more accurate prediction of how consumers will react to COO.

The paper explicitly demonstrates that the strength of country-brand association moderates COO’s influence on brand equity. Such a relationship had previously only been theoretically implied but had not been empirically tested across multiple categories of products on multiple levels of CI.

This paper aims to examine how social and moral salience influences the activation/deactivation of consumer motives and how this in turn affects costly pro-environmental consumer behavior.

In two experiments involving real purchases, it was tested whether social salience (private vs public choice) and moral salience (recall of neutral vs immoral action) lead to the activation of normative motives, and/or the deactivation of economic motives, and whether this facilitated the purchase of a costlier green product.

Participants were motivated by both economic and normative motives, and they actively made trade-offs between these motives as the choice environment changed. Green consumption was positively influenced by social and moral salience but only when both salience conditions were present simultaneously. However, salience did not lead to the activation of normative motives, as was expected, but to a deactivation of the motive to save money. This may suggest that while the importance of norms was not altered by salience, the perceived value of the green option likely changed in such a way that participants became more inclined to choose the costlier green option.

The present research sheds light on how and why social and moral salience influences green consumption. It was demonstrated that social and moral salience influences the tendency to purchase costlier green products, however, only when both are combined. Also, the effects of social and moral salience may not rely on the activation of facilitating social and moral motives but rather on the deactivation of conflicting economic motives.