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The purpose of this paper is to describe and analyse a process for developing indicators of effectiveness for the city brand strategy.

A single-case study method is used as the analytical approach. The proposed indicators of effectiveness were developed in cooperation between the municipal government of a large, post-industrial Polish city and representatives from academia.

The paper addresses three important considerations to be taken into account by city managers when they seek to develop criteria for measuring the effectiveness of branding: links between tangible and intangible effects of brand implementation; spillover effects that sectoral strategies such as those aimed at urban renewal have on the city brand and vice versa; and the adoption of a threefold temporal regime whereby the effects of projects that contribute to the brand strategy are measured in the short, medium and long term.

The proposed approach offers a useful point of departure for place managers for the design of place brand strategy evaluation systems. The study is limited to the case of a single city.

The merger of brand management and public management perspectives re-evaluates the existing attempts to measure place brand strategy effectiveness. The new approach stimulates place authorities to consider multiple perspectives on the methods and instruments of measurement. It also implies the organisational shift where a number of units from the city hall coordinate their efforts to contribute to the assessment of the brand strategy.

A more systematic approach to measurement of place brand strategy effectiveness can be used to increase the level of legitimacy of brand-related activities in the eyes of internal stakeholders and to increase the level of professionalism among the public officers responsible for effectiveness measurement.

Theoretical considerations and the practice of place branding alike tend to give insufficient attention to criteria for measuring the effectiveness of place-branding strategies. This paper concentrates on the process of translating general strategic objectives into specific, measureable and time-bound operational indicators. The combination of theoretical insights into place branding together with public management grounds this approach in the administrative environment in which local authorities work.

The purpose of the study is to verify the theoretical assumptions based on literature review regarding the issue of brand effectiveness evaluation and the potential measurement framework, as well as to provide insights into the nature of effectiveness measurement of city brand strategies. The findings are considered important foundations for designing a place branding measurement system, which is the next step and final purpose of the author’s research project.

A total of 12 international academic experts from eight countries (in four continents) were individually interviewed. A semi-structured individual interview was applied as a research method. Sampling was purposive and the respondents represented the fields of marketing, place branding and public management. The standardized set of 19 open-ended questions was categorized into four themes (city brand effectiveness, methodology, measurement process and indicators).

The measurement of effectiveness of city branding should be treated as a strategic endeavor; however, it is a complex issue where political, social and methodological challenges overlap. Barriers to the development of a well-functioning measurement system include: too narrow understanding of what brand is, lack of knowledge or culture of measurement, conflicting political interests, reluctance to involve internal stakeholders, insufficient funding and complexity of the brand itself. The reliable measurement system should be characterized by attributes such as simplicity and durability, stakeholder inclusion, political rationale, adjustment to the specificity of the city and the independence of the measuring body/institution.

Up-to-date, common standards or universal measurement frames of the place branding measurement system do not exist. No discussion can be found in the literature on how such a system should be designed and implemented. Opinions of the experts interviewed provide important insights into the components and conditions of the reliable measurement system that would meet both methodological standards and practical needs. Further studies and analyses are however necessary to eventually compose the optimal city brand measurement system.

The purpose of this paper is to systematically review and evaluate critically what is known about the attempts made to quantify the influence of place branding from a geographic perspective. In particular, this study reviews how scholars have conceptualized and measured place branding influence and provides directions for future research.

Through a systematic review of seven databases using an a priori defined search string, 39 articles attempting to quantify place branding influence were identified. These studies were reviewed and the paper information was used to explore how place branding research has thus far quantified branding’s influence.

There is a clear compatibility between place branding and human geography research domains, with a potential for place branding influence to be conceptualized through the sense-of-place, which has implications for place equity and consumer decision-making. Much of the existing studies have conceptualized influence through place equity, revealing potential performance indicators for its quantification.

This study is based on research papers that attempt to quantify the effectiveness of place branding of urban areas. Limitations include the exclusion of qualitative studies which may provide alternative approaches to determine place branding outcomes.

As a systematic review, the main contribution of this paper is a contemporary overview of how place branding influence has been quantified. It also provides valuable insights into the policy formulation and its implementation.

Places in competition for inward investment increasingly apply place brands to address their target groups, often being unable to adequately establish the effectiveness of this approach. Based on theoretically derived components and structures an empirically validated model – the investor‐based place brand equity model (IPE) – is presented. Using the example of North European creative industries investments in Germany, the purpose of this paper is to illustrate the application of the model in establishing the effectiveness of place brands. This is preformed with the German place brand “Lübeck” as the illustrative case.

Theoretically derived model components and structures to establish the effectiveness of place brands from an investor perspective are tested empirically. This empirical test encompasses primary data from 101 North European creative industries investors in Germany (31 percent of total population).

The effectiveness of place brands in influencing the behaviour of inward investors can be established by identifying and applying suitable place brand attributes and place brand benefits. While place brand attributes assist the operational place brand management, place brand benefits support strategic decisions to be taken by place brand managers.

The model is limited to establish the effectiveness of place brands from the investor's point of view. If this approach can be related to the costs of implementation, the model can be extended to assess the efficiency. Within the context of this research, establishing the effectiveness is considered to be the only reliable approach for the time being since the costs of the place branding activities can usually not be delimited from economic development budgets. The model has not yet been considered for other target groups (e.g. tourists, residents).

So far this area of research has been approached by case studies. Considering this limited research basis, this paper aims at developing a generic approach to identify and validate those components and structures which can increase the effectiveness of place brands from an investor's perspective.

To achieve a full understanding of the role of marketing from plan to profit requires a knowledge of the basic building blocks. This textbook introduces the key concepts in the art or science of marketing to practising managers. Understanding your customers and consumers, the 4 Ps (Product, Place, Price and Promotion) provides the basic tools for effective marketing. Deploying your resources and informing your managerial decision making is dealt with in Unit VII introducing marketing intelligence, competition, budgeting and organisational issues. The logical conclusion of this effort is achieving sales and the particular techniques involved are explored in the final section.

It seems that the Internet boom, which started at the end of the 1990s and finished with the spectacular collapse of the so-called dotcoms, is probably over. We are currently enjoying a period of fast and stable growth. This is manifested by the growing number of both Internet users and companies which – to an ever-increasing extent – use the Internet as a form of communication (both internal and external), promotion, sales etc. Expenditures on Internet advertising are growing continuously and now constitute more than 25% of all advertising expenditure. A natural consequence of this development is the need for the standardisation and organisation of the world of the Internet. These activities will result in a greater awareness of the benefits which this medium provides, increasing the possibilities of its use, and – most importantly – the opportunity to evaluate the return on investments made on the Internet. Nowadays, it is clear that many companies are striving to increase the quality of their activities on the Internet or to improve the effectiveness of such activities. As a consequence, the number of companies that look for indices which would enable the making of more precise and effective decisions in the scope of online operations is growing.

This chapter is dedicated to the phenomenon of the increasing role of the Internet in business, including the scale of its use by Polish and international companies. We present the most commonly used measures of marketing activities on the Internet and in social media. This group includes the indices which make it possible to determine whether a company actually needs a website. Other measures allow for the improvement in the effectiveness of the activity on the Internet, whereas others specify the costs of activities on the Internet and often serve as the basis for settlements between a company and advertising agencies or companies specialising in website design. It is worth emphasising that the Paid, Earned, Shared, Owned (PESO) model, worked out by Don Bartholomew,¹ is the basis for creation and description of indices concerning social media. This model has gained certain popularity in the social media industry. It does not, however, specify how individual indices should be named and calculated. It maps already existing indices and adapts them to specific levels of marketing communication measurement. All the measures indicated by the author of the model have been grouped into five major areas: exposure, engagement, brand awareness, action and recommendations. This model– similarly to all models of performance measurement – inspired by the sales funnel concept, adjusts certain standard indices and proposals of measurements for specific levels. Additionally, the measures are divided into four types, depending on who the owner of the content is: Paid (P) – refers to all forms of paid content; Owned (O) – all websites and web properties controlled by a company or brand; Earned (E) – the contents about a given brand created spontaneously by Internet users; and Shared (S) – the contents shared by Internet users.

The employer brand is a crucial intangible asset for companies as it enhances the employer–employee relationship, leading to improved employee performance and overall company outcomes. This paper aims to investigate the contribution of the employer brand to the financial results of companies in southern Europe.

The sample consists of 266 companies operating in southern European countries during the year 2020. Secondary data on employer brand attributes, assessed from the perspective of current employees, were collected from the Glassdoor platform. Financial indicators were obtained from the companies' annual financial reports. The research hypotheses were tested using regression analysis.

The results of the regression analysis support the notion that the employer brand contributes to profitability indicators and management effectiveness indicators of southern European companies. However, the study did not find evidence supporting the contribution of the employer brand to market indicators and financial structure indicators of the observed companies.

This study is one of the first empirical investigations to assess the role of the employer brand as a human capital tool for enhancing the financial performance of companies in southern Europe. The study examines employer brand attributes from the perspective of current employees, who actively participate in shaping the employer brand and the company's image. In contrast to prior research, this study incorporates a more extensive set of financial indicators, categorized into four groups: profitability indicators, management effectiveness indicators, market indicators and financial structure indicators.

The purpose of this study is to examine how five different multi-level governance (MLG) models affect place branding (PB) performance in Saudi Arabia.

In hierarchical administrative systems, central governments exert control on PB, influencing its effectiveness. While PB as such is widely studied, the effect of MLG on PB performance in centralized administrative systems remains understudied. The study is approached as a multiple case study of nine cities.

The study reveals that different MLG models indeed affect PB performance differently. Direct access to central leadership and resources boosts branding performance, while privatization promotes flexibility with similarly positive effects. Study findings, furthermore, show that some cities are considered too big to fail. Cities such as Riyadh and Neom are of prime importance and receive plenty of resources and leadership attention, while others are considered peripheral, are under-resourced and branding performance suffers accordingly. Emerging differences in PB performance associated with different MLG models are thus likely to deepen the gap between urban economic winners and losers.

This paper introduces five MLG models based on the actors involved in PB, their interactions and their access to resources. For each model, this paper assesses other factors which may influence the effectiveness of PB as well, such as access to the national leadership and staff capacity. This research thereby adds to the literature by identifying specific factors within MLG models influencing PB performance in hierarchical administrative systems.

The purpose of this paper is to study ways, which regional administrations affect place branding effectiveness.

The study was conducted based on qualitative analysis. In total, 10 place branding cases of federal subjects of Russia were considered to estimate short-, mid- and long-term effects of place brands and quality of regional administrations’ place branding process management. The information on these cases was taken and systematized from three groups of sources, namely, official information from regional administrations (including regulatory acts); scientific publications focused on the brands of selected regions; data from federal and regional news agencies.

It is revealed that the quality of place branding processes is positively related to the presence and power of place branding effects, while the branding budget has no observable impact on place branding. The areas of attention for regional administrations intending to develop the place brand are defined.

The limitation of this study is that the chosen approach is based on secondary data on brand-management practices that are publicly available. This information is mostly fragmentary and may not provide a complete view of place branding practices.

This paper provides a view on place branding success factors from the standpoint of the quality of branding process, rather than quality of the brand itself. The role of regional administrations in this process is studied, thus proposing a basis for integrating place branding in a public administration field.