Exploring the role of stakeholders in place branding - a case analysis of the 'City of Liverpool'

Abstract

To date, there has been no investigation into the roles and interrelationships of various stakeholder groups in developing place branding. Similarly, there is limited previous research that examines the links between stakeholders, place branding and sustainable businesses' development. This study is based on in-depth semi-structured interviews with representatives from a diverse group of key stakeholders including local authorities, investment agencies, private sector representatives and local businesses as well as a number of follow up interviews with key representatives from the business community within the 'City of Liverpool', UK. These included stakeholders that have both the power and the interest to develop place branding and implement a strategic plan that support's businesses' development. A relationship framework demonstrating the dynamic roles of different stakeholders in place branding has been proposed as a platform for business development.

Classifying residents' roles as online place-ambassadors

“…Stakeholder theory (Freeman & McVea, 2001) points out the importance of acknowledging the variety of stakeholders, and is useful in understanding the distinct perception of place images among different stakeholders (Maheshwari et al, 2014). Stylidis et al (2015) identify diverse place perceptions of different stakeholders, which may even conflict with each other (e.g.…”

Online Place Branding: Is Geography ‘Destiny’ in a ‘Space of Flows’ World?

“…The concept of place marketing emerged in the early 1990s as a distinctive theoretical and research field with the work of Kotler et al [2] that "include a presentation of best practices and a theoretical approach" [41] (p. 6). By adding the term 'place' (or sometimes 'geographical' that corresponds to mean cities, metropolitan areas, regions, communities, states, countries or nations) to the 'marketing' term, it can lead to a type of specific product to which an ordinary process will be applied, considering that there is no practical difficulty in replacing physical products with places [42] and the use of techniques normally associated with the creation of classical product brands [43]. The marketing popular model of '4p' (product, price, placement, promotion) [44] and "its performance in the procedure of place/city marketing" [45] (p. 369) or the adoption of some "strategic marketing management tools and conscious branding" [46] (p. 253) or designing a place to satisfy the needs of its target markets [47] are key ingredients of place marketing.…”

Applying the Zaltman metaphor elicitation technique on understanding place image

“…This fact can explain why earlier city branding studies commonly focus on the perception of separate audiences, such as residents (Aryanti, 2015; Braun et al , 2013; Hereźniak and Florek, 2018; Merrilees et al , 2009; Rukayah et al , 2016), entrepreneurs (Kaya and Marangoz, 2014) and visitors (Gómez et al , 2018; Zhang and Zhao, 2009). However, various stakeholders have interrelationships (Maheshwari et al , 2014), and aligning their different perspectives is very important in place branding (Henninger et al , 2016; Kotsi et al , 2018).…”