The Influence of a Heritage City Branding on the City’s Brand Identity and Brand Image, and Tourists’ Visiting Decision

Abstract

The growing emphasis on urban management has driven a trend toward city branding to enhance the city attractiveness. This study investigates the influence of city branding on the city’s brand identity and brand image, and tourists’ visiting decision. This study was done in a quantitative approach. The data was collected by distributing online questionnaire, targeting visitors of Yogyakarta city. A total of 216 respondents participated in this study, obtained using a purposive sampling method. The data was analyzed using Structural Equation Modeling (SEM) in AMOS 21.0. The results show that the city branding directly influences the brand identity and visiting decision, but does not directly influence the brand image. Furthermore, the brand identity has a positive, significant and direct influence on the brand image and visiting decision. The brand identity mediates the influence of city branding on the visiting decision. The brand identity also mediates the influence of city branding on the brand image. Lastly, the brand image mediates the influence of brand identity on the visiting decision.JEL: M30, M31, M39.

Social Media in City Branding Strategic: Empirical study in Solo City, Indonesia

“…City branding of Solo has succeeded in influencing tourists to visit. This is in line with the results of research (Fatmawati & Maharani, 2023); (Jannah, 2014); (Alvianna et al, 2022); (Purwanto & Soliha, 2017); (Sudarmiatin et al, 2019) that city branding has a positive effect on visit decisions. Tourists visit Solo not only once but 67 percent of respondents have visited Solo more than four times.…”

“…The number of tourists after COVID-19 has increased significantly as presented in the graph in Figure 1 below. (Fatmawati & Maharani, 2023); (Alvianna et al, 2022); (Jannah, 2014); (Purwanto & Soliha, 2017); (Sudarmiatin et al, 2019) Visitor decisions are positively impacted by city branding. (Amrullah et al, 2022); (Putra et al, 2019) Visitation decisions are not significantly impacted by city branding.…”

“…City Branding City Image (Putra et al, 2019); (Jannah, 2014); (Purwanto & Soliha, 2017) City image is positively impacted by city branding. (Fatmawati & Maharani, 2023) City Branding has an insignificant effect on city image…”