Journal of Place Management and Development最新文献

Purpose

The fundamental mission of every green city is to harmonize urban living with environmental preservation. However, a critical challenge arises when the residents of such cities do not share the same level of environmental consciousness, potentially eroding the integrity of the green city’s brand identity. Hence, this study aims to explore the factors influencing residents’ identification with green city branding and assesses how this identification subsequently affects their green citizenship behaviors.

Design/methodology/approach

A survey of 1,217 residents from 15 green cities across six countries was conducted and analyzed using SPSS 28.0 for descriptive statistics and PLS-SEM for measurement and structural model analysis.

Findings

The results indicate that green city-self connection, green city distinctiveness and environmental benefits significantly impact GCRI, which, in turn, significantly influences green city protection, loyalty and advocacy behaviors. However, green city social and economic benefits did not affect resident identification.

Practical implications

The results of this study provide valuable managerial insights for city brand managers, green city developers and governmental representatives. The study underscores the importance of considering residents as crucial internal stakeholders in the creation of a green city identity that effectively promotes sustainable urban living and an eco-friendly culture.

Originality/value

This study provides theoretical insights into the relationship between green identification and residents’ willingness and commitment to act as ambassadors and promote their city’s green values.

Purpose

This study aims to discuss the contribution of street art projects to the place-making of villages and the effects it generates for local stakeholders.

Design/methodology/approach

A conceptual framework is developed based on the main characteristics of the place-making process, street art, creative place-making, as well as place identity, revitalisation and regeneration. This framework defines a set of thematic categories for the qualitative content analysis of online information, e.g. websites, media and blog posts, as well as in-depth interviews with local stakeholders.

Findings

This research presents the contribution of street art in place-making involving citizens, local businesses and international artists in a collective act to preserve local identity and revitalise and regenerate villages.

Research limitations/implications

The research is focused only on villages. Cities are not considered in the research.

Practical implications

Street art projects provide villages with several opportunities, such as stimulating place regeneration and revitalisation, giving new shape and decoration to neighbourhoods and streets and attracting visitors and business. Moreover, street art is commonly used to communicate local history, culture, traditions and social and political facts, helping places to vehiculate their identity and their messages to the next generations. Street art is also used as a part of a place branding strategy.

Social implications

The village gets the opportunity to exploit the street art value proposition to stimulate the restocking of the place, if the primary stakeholders of the place are ready to invest in the new place identity giving trust to the street art project.

Originality/value

Street art projects contribute to the place-making of villages. They are used to communicate place identity, fostering cooperation between local stakeholders and economic and social development.

Purpose

This paper aims to provide conceptual clarity on the different approaches of place branding in the literature. It discusses three main approaches and provides a new definition of place brands that acknowledges the full multi-sensory experience of place brands. This paper also elaborates brand management within the three approaches.

Design/methodology/approach

Conceptual paper

Findings

This study identifies three co-existing approaches of place branding and provides a definition of place brands for each of them. The first approach conceptualises place brands as symbolic constructs that identify and differentiate places from others. Brand symbols such as logos and slogans are central, assuming that brand meaning resides in them. The second approach views place brands as images and associations in the minds of target groups, whereby brands reside in individuals’ minds (the cognitive). This paper aligns with a third approach that views place brands as experiential, multi-sensory constructs. Brands invite not only mental representations in people’s minds but especially also multi-sensory embodied experiences. The authors thus define place brands as marketing systems that consist of dynamic performative assemblages of symbolic, discursive, institutional and material elements that selectively invite certain multi-sensory and embodied experiences of place by stakeholders and target groups.

Originality/value

This paper contributes to conceptual clarity by providing an analytical framework identifying three main approaches to place branding. The authors further reflect on the implications of each approach for brand management. This paper also builds on recent literatures to provide a new and contemporary definition of place brands as multi-sensory experiences that encompasses embodiment.

Purpose

Consumer choices are influenced by available resources, and time is increasingly recognised as a valuable and scarce resource. This study aims to assess the effect of chronic time pressure (CTP) on the desire to stay in retail venues (DTS), considering the mediating role of utilitarian and hedonic shopping motivations and the moderating role of time management (TM); and examine the role of DTS in enhancing the shopping outcomes of satisfaction, patronage intentions and positive word-of-mouth (WOM).

Design/methodology/approach

Two survey-based studies were conducted, employing structural equation modelling (SEM) and Hayes’ PROCESS Model No. 1 to test the proposed model.

Findings

The findings indicate that CTP does not have a direct impact on shopping utilitarian motivations or DTS. However, it has a direct effect on hedonic motivations that mediate the path from CTP to DTS. In addition, TM positively moderates both paths from CTP and hedonic motivations to DTS. Finally, the results demonstrate that reinforcing shopper DTS leads to increased satisfaction, patronage intentions and positive WOM.

Research limitations/implications

Based on the findings, theoretical contributions and actionable managerial implications regarding how to leverage CTP and TM to enhance shopper engagement and retail venue outcomes are discussed.

Originality/value

While prior research has often focused on situational time pressure, this study concentrates on CTP and examines the impact of perceived time constraints and feeling rushed on utilitarian and hedonic shopping motivations and DTS. Moreover, the study tests the moderating role of TM and provides evidence that DTS leads to other desirable shopping outcomes.

Purpose

This study examines the relationship between place branding and economic growth, addressing the gap in literature that directly links the two. Recognising the importance of place branding in attracting investment and fostering economic development, the study aims to substantiate the commonly held belief that place branding contributes to economic prosperity.

Design/methodology/approach

Employing a scoping review methodology, this study analyses 129 articles to assess the evidence supporting the impact of place branding on economic outcomes. The review spans a wide range of fields and includes both direct and indirect evidence, highlighting the complexity of establishing a clear link.

Findings

The review uncovers a significant literature gap, with only a small fraction of the articles providing direct evidence of a link between place branding and economic outcomes. While many articles imply a positive impact, the evidence is not sufficiently generalisable, indicating a yet unverified assumption in the field.

Originality/value

This paper contributes to place branding scholarship by critically examining the assumed economic benefits of place branding. It suggests that while the belief in place branding’s economic influence is widespread and reasonable, there is a crucial need for more rigorous studies to establish a firm empirical foundation for this relationship.

Purpose

This study investigates the UNESCO Creative City of Gastronomy Network as a global spatial brand and explore the tensions that emerge when this global brand is appropriated locally.

Design/methodology/approach

This paper is based on case study research that uses critical discourse analysis to identify the implications of a transferable learning capacity.

Findings

This paper identifies three different types of tensions in place brand management that emerge during the local appropriation of global brands: tensions inherent in multi-scalarity, tensions associated with integrating governance and strategy-related tensions.

Originality/value

This study advances the theoretical understanding of the spatial complexity inherent in place brand management practices by focusing on the UNESCO Creative City of Gastronomy Network as a global brand in a Scandinavian context.

Purpose

The purpose of this study is to investigate the relationship between being an inclusive city and branding oneself as such, as more cities adopt the inclusive city concept as part of their brand identity.

Design/methodology/approach

This paper builds theory by introducing a typology that categorizes cities based on their level of inclusion and degree of branding, supplemented by an analysis of the branding practices and identities. Integrating the literature on inclusive city and city branding, with a specific focus on the inherent conflict between their sharing and competing attributes, this research postulates that a city may choose to engage in being inclusive and branding itself as such in various ways depending on its dominant motivations of altruism or entrepreneurialism.

Findings

Four distinct types of inclusive city branding are identified: inclusion ambassadors (high inclusion and high branding); innate champions (high inclusion and low branding); façade marketers (low inclusion and high branding); and silent segregators (low inclusion and low branding). Furthermore, it underscores that inclusive city branding is shaped by the interplay of entrepreneurialism and altruism, not just a city’s inclusion. Different branding practices, such as media-generated images, narratives and events, are emphasized when entrepreneurialism is the primary motivation, whereas iconic architecture buildings, flagship projects and long-term policies are more associated with altruism.

Originality/value

This study develops a typology to unravel the paradoxical aspects of inclusive city branding. Examining the intersection of city branding motivations and practices enriches existing literature. Moreover, its findings offer valuable insights for cities grappling with the implementation of contentious inclusive branding strategies, thereby bridging theory with practical applications.

Purpose

This paper aims to address what it means to brand a city as “smart”. In other words, what ideas, understandings and actions are mobilized by the discourse of smart cities in a particular context.

Design/methodology/approach

Taking a brand interpretive approach, this paper uses deconstructive criticism to understand the performativity of smart cities within the Brazilian Charter for Smart Cities and to expose hegemonic power structures and the various colonizations that disenfranchise consumers and citizens of the Global South.

Findings

This paper finds that the branding of smart cities within the Brazilian Charter for Smart Cities is largely performative and rhetorical in nature. The authors identify those dimensions of the smart city that are materialized by this branding performance. For example, the authors identify how the Charter calls forth issues around technological solutionism, sustainability and social inclusion. At the same time, the analysis draws attention to the dimensions of smart cities that are disguised by such performances.

Research limitations/implications

The implications of the work suggest that the authors need to understand the designation “smart city” as a branding performance. More research is required in context to determine in exactly what ways smart city projects are being implemented.

Practical implications

Rather than adhering only to the rhetoric of smartness, cities have to work hard to make smartness a reality – a smartness constructed not just on technical solutions but also on human solutions. That is, the complexity of urban issues that are apparently addressed in the move to smartness demand more than a technological fix.

Originality/value

The research offers a novel lens through which to view smart cities.

Purpose

While the value of stakeholder involvement in destination marketing and branding has been emphasized, little research has been conducted on the inner workings of collaborative initiatives. Based on the case of the Athens Tourism Partnership, Greece, this study aims to map the value co-creation process as it unfolds in joint destination marketing and branding initiatives.

Design/methodology/approach

To capture the way partners collaborated to create the brand of the city, this study collected data through participant observation and analyzed it using Classical Grounded Theory principles.

Findings

The study reveals the different types of relationships and their characteristics that develop when an airline-airport-destination authority partnership is established to enhance destination brand and the potential dynamics of the collaborative initiatives.

Originality/value

The FiNE framework has been developed and can guide stakeholders who wish to collaborate to co-create the destination brand. This study offers theoretical and practical implications for destination authorities and tourism stakeholders to initiate, manage and implement collaborative initiatives that may empower the destination brand and deliver win-win outcomes.