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This paper aims to study discursive dynamics in place marketing collaboration, which has the potential to construct common ground between stakeholders or provoke discursive struggles emerging from competing accounts.

The paper applies a discursive perspective to collaboration and uses the discursive model of the collaboration to analyze dynamics between stakeholder representatives in two regional level place marketing projects carried out in Eastern Finland in 2011-2014. An analysis of 23 interviews focuses on how stakeholders construct shared understandings of project issues and interests, and discursive struggles that emerge from competing accounts and heterogeneous spaces.

Identified issues in the projects related to the competitiveness between regions, peer pressure to carry out place marketing and a lack of budget resources for marketing for gaining visibility. Broader discourses of competitiveness and promotion provided shared discursive resources for the collaborators. An analysis of the interests of specific organizations revealed discursive struggles that relate to the spatial content of place marketing activities and also the symbolic content of the image of the region.

While the paper underlines the embeddedness of collaboration within broader discursive contexts and cultural sensitivity attached to communication, it does not cover how broader discourses constrain communicative processes or how cultural context influences them.

The paper presents an original perspective on stakeholder collaboration in place marketing projects by highlighting the discursive aspects of communication, and especially the construction of shared understandings as a central element in collaboration. This is useful for facilitating and coordinating stakeholders’ communication, which has been considered important for the success of place marketing and branding activity.

The purpose of this paper is to theoretically explain the significance of discourse for the construction of the legitimacy of place marketing practice, and to illustrate empirically how this is done in a “genre of strategy”.

The paper applies a critical discourse analysis perspective, and utilises a theoretical framework of four legitimation strategies of authorisation, moral evaluation, rationalisation and mythopoesis to analyse how the legitimacy of a place marketing project carried out in the region of North Karelia, Finland, is discursively constructed within strategic documents of the project.

Several discursive legitimation strategies were recognised. The authority of the project was constructed by referring to the organisational context of the project, while rational and moral legitimation strategies drew from hegemonic discourses of regional competitiveness, attractiveness and cooperation. These discourses were further connected to discussions of contemporary regional development in Finland and in Europe.

While the paper underlines the significance of the “genre of strategy” for the discursive legitimation of place marketing projects, it points out that it does not extend to cover the reception or change over time of the legitimation strategies, that should be addressed in further studies.

The paper presents an original perspective on legitimacy of place marketing projects by introducing discourse as a central element in the construction of legitimacy. This is especially useful for critical purposes, as it allows the discourses that legitimise place marketing practice to be placed under scrutiny, hence opening up the possibility for alternative discourses to emerge.

This paper aims to evaluate the marketing decisions made by European tour operators. It seeks to assess the extent of marketing standardisation/adaptation across and within the Nordic region and to identify the centric profiles of the sample firms in terms of marketing decision‐making.

A multiple case study approach was employed and the research design combined a range of empirical data gathered from regional headquarters and one subsidiary.

These indicate that the case study firms manage marketing regionally, at the same time; certain activities are adapted to local market and competitive conditions. It is clear that the “think regional‐act local” philosophy or “cooperative centralisation” is a challenge for tour operators to manage and that the level of international marketing standardisation is affected by situation‐specific factors such as product and industry characteristics.

Any bias in the research as a result of basing findings only on the views of executives interviewed and upon company documentation is tempered with reports from outside sources. Further research needs to be undertaken at the corporate level, in other source markets, and longitudinally. It would also be interesting to carry out a comparative study of other types of firms.

This paper contributes to our knowledge of marketing standardisation/adaptation from the perspective of a regional market‐place by investigating the strategic approach chosen for the establishment of marketing decisions. In exploiting the concept of centricity, it is more conceptually grounded than some previous studies.

Investment promotion is gaining in popularity, yet its relationship with regional development remains unclear and under-investigated. The purpose of this paper is to combine place marketing and regional development concepts to explore investment promotion in the Czech, Polish and Slovak regions. It identifies elements of best practice and investigates to what extent these are used in foreign direct investment promotion conducted by regional authorities. Organisation- and implementation-related elements are studied. The discussion aims to answer the question of how systematic Central–Eastern European regional investment promotion is, and what are the factors determining regions’ involvement in, and the extent of, promotion activities.

Discussion is based on an original survey of Central–Eastern European (CEE) regional authorities' investment promotion. The paper develops a measurement of regional authorities’ engagement in investment promotion – an investment promotion index (IPI) and using non-parametric, two-tailed Spearmans correlation test investigates the relationship between IPI and socio-economic conditions in the regions. Kruskal-Wallis, a non-parametric test of difference is used to investigate statistical significance of differences in mean values between the three countries.

The analysis provides early insights into the relationship between regional development and investment attraction – the main theoretical contribution of the paper. Diverse levels of engagement in promotion are not influenced by the staple competitiveness factors of gross domestic product growth rates or foreign direct investment stock. Instead, it is conditioned by labour market situation in the countries studied.

Investment promotion relationship to regional development remains under-explored. The main focus of the analysis offered is the varying levels of CEE regional authorities’ involvement in investment promotion and its relationship to the socio-economic conditions prevailing in the regions. Exploring this relationship, the paper provides original contribution in the following two aspects: it establishes a systematic way of measuring regional authorities’ engagement with investment promotion; and it links the level of investment promotion to wider development of the regions.

The purpose of this research is to explore the effects of regional geographic brand congruency (GBC) on brand trust, brand parity, perceived value, brand honesty and purchase intentions.

The research uses an experimental method in two studies to test hypotheses derived from the literature.

This research conceptualizes GBC as the relationship between products/services and geographic regions that are authentic, credible and fitting. Results from the two studies support the hypothesis that brands with regional GBC have higher levels of consumer evaluation compared to brands with geographic incongruence or with no geographic reference at all.

This research offers insight into the decision to name a brand. If one is going to associate a product with a regional geographic location, it is more effective to use a location that is fitting as it applies to that product; otherwise, it would be best to avoid a geographic association in a brand name.

The exploration of regional geographic brand congruency in relation to outcomes of brand trust, brand parity, perceived value, purchase intentions and honesty offers new insights into the nature and role of place images.

This study aims to outline an axiology of inclusivity, which can facilitate self-reflection on the possible impact of acting and pursuing a more inclusive branding and marketing for places.

By deconstructing the main assumption, which constitutes the new inclusive paradigm in the marketing and branding of places as more participatory, responsible and democratic, this article tackles critical and pragmatist concerns about the political dimension and its implications for branding and marketing theories and practices in the realm of places.

The article argues that, to be understood and enacted as inclusive, branding and marketing should be seen and act as (bio)political arts of government, characterized by the impolitical as an alternative form of political praxis, whose axiological foundation is based on a particular form of civism, which offers a different mode and stance of approaching political effects and impacts for all stakeholders involved.

Little has been written about the political value, substance and appearance that indicate inclusivity as a fundamental notion for participation, engagement and democracy. This article contributes to the existing literature, arguing that inclusivity should be demystified, as it may present a self-fulfilling discourse that might create political problems.

The aims of this study were to investigate the influencing factors of wine tourism development in China, assess the marketing efforts made by the wine-tourism stakeholders, and provide constructive suggestions for the development of China's wine tourism.

A qualitative approach was adopted for the purposes of this research. The study site is the Bohai Bay wine region in Shandong Province, the birthplace of China's modern wine industry and the largest wine-producing area in China. Chateau Changyu-Castel and Chateau Junding were visited in June 2010. Qualitative data were collected in the forms of observations of the wineries, interviews with wine tourists, focus groups with tourism practitioners, and analyses of travel blogs, document excerpts, and official web sites. Content analysis produced a thematic framework on people, promotion, and place.

A number of facilitating and detrimental factors were revealed pertaining to China's wine tourism development on the three themes: people, promotion, and place.

The number of wine tourists being interviewed is relatively small, and the wineries chosen are relatively large ones. Results may not be generalized to other wine tourists and wineries in China.

The paper includes implications for the development of wine tourism in China, such as food and wine pairing that combines wine with local (Chinese) cuisine at the wineries, positioning, and genuine government support.

Research on wine tourism and wine tourists in China is scant. The current research fills a research gap by examining China's wine tourism phenomena from multiple perspectives, including those of tourists, tourism practitioners, and wine tourism destinations.

It is a great honor to be selected as a marketing legend, and 117 of my refereed journal articles are published in nine volumes by Sage India as part of the Legend series. In this chapter, I discuss my preparation for an academic career and the trajectory my research has followed. I reflect on my research contributions to marketing by selectively summarizing the key contributions in each of the nine volumes and draw out some lessons and principles I have learned in the process.

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.

There has been long‐standing interest in the duplication of audience between media vehicles, starting with work by Agostini and later developed by Goodhardt, Ehrenberg and Collins into the “duplication of viewing law”. The aim of this paper is to further extend duplication analysis to radio listening. As radio markets are believed to have many partitions, the paper considers whether an un‐partitioned duplication analysis provides an adequate description of market structure.

The paper reports the results of a weekly radio diary with 1,129 responses in a regional New Zealand radio market. This data has special characteristics suitable for this research: the market has experienced rapid expansion in station numbers with substantial attempts at format segmentation, providing a strong test of the un‐partitioned nature of the duplication analysis; use of a single regional market avoids the aggregation bias inherent in national data; use of primary research allows the inclusion of non‐commercial stations, which are not included in syndicated radio research in this market.

Duplication of listening does broadly follow the duplication of viewing law. Contrary to industry belief, most of the deviations from a mass market are not due to micro‐formats (e.g. classic rock) but rather are explained by a broad partitioning of the market between “talk” and “music” segments, although the paper also identifies a unique station that still deviates from its parent partition.

The duplication of listening law does hold for this market, showing that radio stations compete largely on the basis of cumulative audience. However, it also provides a tool for identifying partitions and benchmarking station performance within this broad market structure. Future research could consider demographic or psychographic correlates of market partitions, alternative methods of purchase‐based segmentation such as nested logit, latent segmentation and Hendry analysis, and breaking duplication analysis down from weekly level to dayparts.

Station and network managers can apply this methodology to identify partitions and benchmark brand performance in their own markets. They should expect to usually compete on the basis of cumulative audience rather than station loyalty, as customer loyalty tends to be a feature of the partition rather than the station. Media planners should also be aware of the duplication of listening law when designing media schedules: greater frequency can be achieved by choosing a set of stations with high duplications (generally higher share stations); greater reach can be achieved by including some smaller stations with low duplications.

This is the first application of duplication analysis to radio audiences, and the confirmation of the law goes against practitioner expectations. It is also a rare example of how duplication analysis can be used to identify not just segments, but also individually unique stations. Therefore, while this research disconfirms prior expectations it also provides a new tool for practical segmentation of radio markets.