Tracing the Origins of Place Branding Research: A Bibliometric Study of Concepts in Use (1980–2018)

A REVIEW OF THE ESSENCE OF CITY BRANDING IN ENHANCING IMAGE AND IDENTITY OF A CITY

The future of cities is at the juncture of a new reality. This poses a domestic opportunity to relook and rediscover the image and identity of the city. Cities are often viewed in the international arena, hence the authentic local essence of city image and identity is often flattened, hidden, or ignored. Therefore, this paper aims to review existing literature on city branding in order to identify characteristics that will enhance city strategies. This research is conducted using content and thematic analysis based on the Scopus and Web of Science (WoS) databases. Findings have identified criteria such as integrated- design, landmarks, signature architecture, city vision statement, culture and symbolic assets to be among the contributing factors. Based on the review, the domain of city branding consists of intangible and tangible city assets that must be further researched in the field. These findings shall contribute to the research in the context of cities in Malaysia.

Place Branding for Smart Cities and Smart Tourism Destinations: Do They Communicate Their Smartness?

Smart cities and smart tourism destinations integrate technological infrastructures and end-user devices with the aim of providing more satisfying experiences. They generate expectations of superior innovation, greater interactivity, participation and a better image. Therefore, they need to communicate their smartness and include it in their branding. The study analyses the smart content present in the tourist and non-tourist official Twitter accounts of a selection of smart cities and smart destinations, through semantic analysis, in order to find out which smart concepts are strategically branded to create a smart tourism destination image. The results show that the best cities in the ranking for each smart topic are not the ones with highest percentages of tweets on that topic. The study also shows that the number and percentage of tweets that communicate smart aspects on the platforms analyzed are low, showing the smartness is not included in their branding. It has also been observed that, almost all cities communicate or do not communicate the same concepts, evincing an undifferentiated branding strategy. The results of this study are interesting for urban policy-makers and tourism destination marketers to improve their branding.

Friendly Locals and Clean Streets?—Evaluating Jakarta’s Destination Brand Image

Destination image and city branding are accumulating a growing body of knowledge in urban studies and tourism literature. Although several visitor destination image models have been proposed, the most prevalent in Asia remains the comprehensive destination image model. This is the first research to test the applicability of this model beyond the United States and with international (rather than domestic) visitors. Jakarta is chosen as the geographical test area for this study, which incorporates structural equation modeling on a data sample of international leisure visitors in Jakarta. The findings indicate that the destination image model could be generalized beyond the US and applied to Jakarta. This study finds that tourism policymakers in Jakarta should focus on promoting the friendliness of local residents and improving the city’s cleanliness, as these are the two most positive and negative perceptions. Overall, this study showed that a unique destination image—a largely under-researched topic in place branding—is a variable that should be considered when formulating the overall place image of city destinations around the world.

State of the Art Research on Sustainable Use of Water Hyacinth: A Bibliometric and Text Mining Analysis

This study aims to present a systematic data-driven bibliometric analysis of the water hyacinth (Eichhornia crassipes) infestation problem around the globe. As many solutions are being proposed in academia for its management, mitigation, and utilization, it requires investigation through a systematic scrutinizing lens. In this study, literature records from 1977 to June 2020 concerning research on water hyacinth are taken from Scopus for text analysis. Trends in the publication of different article types, dynamics of publication, clustering, correlation, and co-authoring patterns between different countries are observed. The cluster analysis indicated four clusters viz. (i) ecological works related to species, (ii) pollutant removal process and methods, (iii) utilization of biofuels for biogas production, and (iv) modelling works. It is clear from the networking analysis that most of the publications regarding water hyacinth are from India, followed by China and the United States. Sentiment analysis with the AFINN lexicon showed that the negative sentiment towards the aquatic weed has intensified over time. An exploratory analysis was performed using a bigram network plot, depicting and outlining different important domains of water hyacinth research. Water hyacinth research has passed the pioneering phase and is now at the end of a steady growth phase or at the beginning of an acceleration phase. In this article, an overview is given for the entirety of water hyacinth research, with an indication of future trends and possibilities.

From Place-Branding to Community-Branding: A Collaborative Decision-Making Process for Cultural Heritage Enhancement

The international debate on cultural heritage enhancement and cultural cross-overs, highlights the need to rethink the relationship between economy, society and territory by working on innovative urban planning and evaluation approaches. In recent times, the concept of “place branding” has become widespread in strategic urban plans, linking marketing approaches to the attractive features of places. The purpose of this study is to outline a holistic approach to cultural heritage enhancement for urban regeneration based on creative and collaborative place branding: “Community branding”. The methodology was tested in Pisticci—near Matera (Basilicata region, Italy)—starting from its historic center. As a multi-methodological decision-making process, Community branding combines approaches and tools derived from Place Branding, Community Planning, Community Impact Evaluation and Place Marketing. The main results achieved include: an innovative approach that combines both management and planning aspects and empowers communities and skills in network; the co-evaluation of cultural, social and economic impacts for the Pisticci Sustainable Urban Lab (PLUS); the writing and signing of an “urban contract” with local Municipality, research centers and PLUS hub association.

City Brand Personality Projected by Municipalities from Central and Eastern Europe Countries—A Comparison of Facebook Usage

City branding is becoming more and more popular, not only as a field of research, but also as a practice of local governments. Municipalities attempt to introduce this concept into their sustainable transformation process, positioning a city among its stakeholders as, for instance, an eco-oriented, innovative, or smart city. An idea that fosters building a strong and consistent city brand is brand personality. The aim of the paper is to diagnose a city’s brand personality dimensions/traits communicated via posts published on official Facebook accounts of cities and to identify differences occurring within this scope between cities of two selected Central and Eastern European countries—Poland and Ukraine. To achieve this aim, the research involved a content analysis of 1700 posts published by 34 municipalities representing regional capital cities of Poland and Ukraine. On the basis of these study results, the authors have supplemented the Aaker (1997) five-dimensional scale of brand personality with the sixth dimension: Prosocial Attitude, which includes cooperative and bureaucratic traits, to better comply with the approach of cities to problems of their inhabitants and their surrounding environment, which is consistent with the idea of sustainability. Furthermore, the fifth trait has been added to characteristics which make up Aaker’s Excitement dimension. Dubbed as patriotic, it refers to the city’s activities related to the local celebration of historical events, indicating national pride and identification with its place of residence. Bureaucratic and patriotic traits were quite frequently observed in posts published on the official Facebook accounts of Ukrainian cities. Moreover, the research proves that in case of Polish cities the dominating brand personality dimensions are Sincerity and Excitement. Ukrainian cities tend to exercise communication based on the Sincerity and Competence dimension.

Extending the View on Project Performance

The main aim of this study is to gain insights into project management professionals’ perception of how project success can be achieved. The Q-methodology was followed in this research. Based on an extensive literature review and validation through expert judgment, a framework consisting of 33 factors increasing the likelihood of success was developed. A total of 34 practitioners in three different sectors (real estate, urban development, and infrastructure) in the Netherlands were asked to rank the statements contributing to the success of their projects. Four different perspectives of how project success can be achieved were distinguished in this study: “seeking the best match”, “being adaptive and open”, “keeping the team focused”, and “preparing for opportunities”. The perception of different practitioners of how success can be obtained may stem from factors of project context rather than sector and complexity. This highlights further research opportunities in taking a contingent approach when investigating project performance. The study helps to grasp the subjectivity of practitioners’ viewpoints regarding the potential ways to enhance project performance by understanding the similarity and differences of these viewpoints.