Content and Development of City Branding: Different Disciplines, Different Approaches

Abstract

City branding has been defined as the purposeful symbolic embodiment of all information connected to a city in order to create associations around it. It can also be seen as an instrument to communicate the city's competitive advantage, the quality of the place, its history, lifestyle, and culture. Studies on city branding extend across academicians and practitioners in the last three decades. Cities as a product have both tangible and intangible attributes that are perceived by potential customers in a positive or negative way. Therefore, city branding is much more complicated than product or service branding. Besides, city branding is a multi-disciplinary concept including city planning, marketing, architecture, and tourism management. All these disciplines approaches to the city branding on the ground of their paradigms, and hence, there is limited clarity and agreement about terminology and definitions. The aim of this research is, then, in order to produce a holistic view, to explore the approaches, variables, and methods, via conducting a systematic literature review and to draw a map of city branding. In the study content an thematic analysis are used and in conclusion city branding literature is categorized under four thematic areas: (1) studies on city branding concept, processes, and measurement; (2) studies on branding strategies; (3) studies on social urbanism; and (4) studies on branding culture and tourism. Most of the studies qualitative methods and there is a general tendency to describe the data but not interpret the relations between the concepts and theories.