City branding: a state‐of‐the‐art review of the research domain

Abstract

Purpose -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. Design/methodology/approach -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. Findings -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.Research limitations/implications -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. Originality/value -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.

Food-branding places – A sensory perspective

“…The concept of place branding (covering all kinds of places from small commercial clusters to cities, regions and nations) is the generally accepted term for territorial branding activities (Kavaratzis, 2004). In this article the main examples of food branding that we use come at the city level, as this corresponds to the empirical scope of our study -cities -and as it is by far the most common level of research when it comes to place branding (Lucarelli and Berg, 2011). However, recent developments in place branding through food also involve the positioning attempts of places other than cities.…”

“…This is also consistent with earlier observations in studies of city branding processes in large metropolitan cities across the globe (Berg, 2010) (www.sbs.su.se/en/Research/Marketing/ Research-Programmes/Stockholm-Programmeof-Place-Branding-STOPP/). Moreover, recent review of 170 published studies in the area of city branding (Lucarelli and Berg, 2011) shows that elements of food, beverages and gastronomy are used frequently as elements of city branding.…”

The current academic debate calls for critical discussion

“…At the same time, such a meeting of international researchers and practitioners is also the right moment to critically question the field of study. Even though our first meta-analyses of the place branding literature (Gertner, 2011;Lucarelli and Berg, 2011;Lucarelli and Brorström, 2013) highlight the exponential growth in contributions, they also criticize the lack of theoretical and conceptual background of our articles. This lack of scientific rigor is surprising, as place researchers have the opportunity to borrow numerous concepts and theories from many different disciplines.…”

The state of academic place branding research according to practitioners

“…How can place branding research become more meaningful with greater societal impact and better alignment between academic and practice (Kavaratzis, 2015)? Does a practitioner's view match with the perceptions of leading academics in the field (Gertner, 2011;Lucarelli and Berg, 2011)? Are we all on the same page regarding research priorities (Moilanen, 2015)?…”