Search results

This paper aims to investigate what influence the perceptions of two parent brands have on the perception of a newly formed co-brand. Furthermore, it elaborates whether respondents’ evaluations of the parent brands, their familiarity towards the parent brands and their usage of the parent brands affect this influence.

Building on both cognitive consistency and information integration theory, this paper proposes a model-based approach to quantify the parent brands’ influence on the co-brand’s perception. Using an empirical study with 317 respondents collected by a professional online market research firm, this paper highlights the benefits of this model-based approach.

The results indicate that the perception of a co-brand arises from a weighted merge of the parent brands’ perceptions. The findings further reveal that the better (worse) a parent brand’s evaluation is in contrast to the other parent brand’s evaluation, the more (less) familiar a parent brand is in contrast to the other parent brand, and the more (less) frequent a parent brand is used in contrast to the other parent brand, the larger (smaller) is its influence on the co-brand’s perception.

The findings shed light on the formation of a co-brand’s perception which can be crucial when selecting the right co-branding partner. Additionally, by quantifying the parent brands’ influence on the perception of the co-brand, this model-based approach helps brand managers to analyze co-brand pairings beforehand and select the best pairing in accordance with their goals.

City branding has gained popularity as governance strategy. However, the academic underpinning is still poor, and city branding needs a more critical conceptualization, as well as more complex management systems. This paper challenges the use of a “one size fits all” city brand, which is still common practice in many places. The paper proposes that city branding involves much more complexity than is commonly thought and outlines a strategy that enables urban policy-makers, marketing researchers and (place) marketers alike to better deal with city branding.

The authors integrate insights from literature on place branding, brand architecture and customer-focused marketing.

The article argues that place brands (in general and communicated place brands in particular) are by definition very complex, due to their different target groups, diverse place offerings and various associations place customers could have. Thus, an advanced brand management including target group-specific sub-brands is needed.

The model will be helpful for place brand managers dealing with a diverse target audience, and is likely to improve the target group-specific communication.

The paper provides an insight into the complexity of city brands and acknowledges that the perception of city brands can differ considerably among different target groups. Additionally, it offers a more comprehensive definition of place brands. This will be helpful for city brand managers and researchers alike in dealing with city brand complexity.

This chapter explores the concept of branding in a contemporary competitive arena of places. The multi-dimensional interpretations of places offer a variety of possibilities to better understand the true essence of destination branding. One of the common interpretations of places is through the study of their images, as destination branding requires a thorough understanding of destination image. The important foundation and relation of destination image are specified and explained. The notion of destination branding has evolved from the fields of marketing and urban studies and has become a cross-disciplinary research area. Thus, the researchers explain that destination branding as well as ‘place branding’ are dynamic concepts that are being continuously being explored in academia for the benefit of practitioners in travel and tourism. This chapter suggests that the use of brand equity is also one of the frontier areas of study in ‘place branding’ as it emphasises the need to thematise destinations (e.g. for their historical heritage, cultural value, natural attractions, etc.) and places for residence (e.g. as green cities, creative cities, smart cities, etc.).

In this chapter, we compare five approaches for assessing competences of higher education graduates. We begin by outlining the main reasons for assessing higher education graduates’ competences. Next, we present a brief definition of competences. This definition is applied throughout the chapter, and forms the framework for comparing various approaches for measuring higher education graduates’ competences, and for discussing their relative strengths and weaknesses. We conclude that the existing approaches for assessing competences are suitable for measuring only one type of competence, that is, either cognitive or non-cognitive, but limited in their capacities to measure both. In the context of changing labor market needs and requirements, it is essential either to use these approaches in combination or to develop innovative methods which are equally suitable for measuring discipline-related as well as more generic competences. In this chapter, we discuss the assessment approaches by mainly focusing on employment-related competences. By employment-related competences we mean both cognitive and non-cognitive aspects of competences, such as personal and social skills, leadership, and communication skills.

Listening to the customers has long been a key phrase and success element in product branding. This paper aims to highlight the importance of listening to residents during the branding of a place. The study explores ways of listening to residents to ensure they are heard and also discusses the challenges and benefits related to place branding flowing from having residents participate in decision-making processes.

Listening to residents and offering opportunities to participate requires place branders to fully attend to, comprehend and respond to residents’ comments, requests, ideas and feedback. This study reports on how two Nordic cities – Turku and Helsinki – listen to their residents. The data used comprise face-to-face interviews, telephone and e-mail conversations and documentary material.

Residents should not be considered as one homogeneous target; participation options and channels should be adapted to the demographics and geographic issues of the different regions and resident groups.

The role of residents and the importance of listening are crucial features in the emerging concept of inclusive place branding (Kavaratzis et al., 2017); its future conceptual development could benefit from the case examples at hand.

City authorities should listen to residents and provide them with opportunities to actively contribute to decision-making. Other cities could learn from the examples introduced in the paper.

This paper documents two Nordic examples of cities putting into practice a policy of listening to the residents, a previously neglected research area.

Place branding and marketing are becoming key governance strategies that can increase governance legitimacy by meaningfully involving local stakeholder groups within the brand identity creation process. There remains a gap in knowledge regarding how place branding managers seek to involve stakeholders in the brand development, communication, and evaluation process. This research, based in three U.S. Deep South states and using Kavaratzis and Hatchʼs (2013) brand identity framework, finds that practitioners are doing well when it comes to expressing local beliefs within the brand identity, but can improve when it comes to analyzing and incorporating that feedback meaningfully. Without this, critical local stakeholders can feel alienated from local governance practices, thus decreasing legitimacy in branding and marketing processes and policies alike.

The present chapter aims to assess how digital transformation impacts current trends in city branding, to analyze the role of digital communication in the branding of selected cities, and to compare the level of exploitation of digital communication for city branding between European and Slovak cities. We conducted empirical research in several phases, and the overall sample consists of 155 cities in Europe and Slovakia. The results of our research showed that European and Slovak cities use to some extent all the investigated tools of digital marketing communication in city branding with a dominant position of social media, both in terms of exploitation and importance for city branding in European and Slovak cities. European cities score significantly better than Slovak cities in all elements of the City Brand Hexagon, as well as in the overall city brand index. Therefore, city branding strategies in the best European cities can serve as a good practice example or inspiration for Slovak cities. Cities with lower rankings and scores on city branding should focus on strengthening their city branding or strengthening their digital communication. The possible trajectory is also the concerted strategy for the branding of the city and its digital communication.

This study aims to discuss science governance in Europe and the network of associated nonprofit institutions. The authors posit that this network, which comprises both (partial) learning organizations and non-learning organizations, has been observed to postpone taking up “responsibility” as an issue in science governance and funding decisions.

This paper discusses the challenge of learning and policy implementation within the European science governance system. By exploring how learning on responsible innovation (RI) in this governance system can be provoked, it addresses the question how Senge’s insights in organizational learning can clarify discourses on and practices of RI and responsibility in research. This study explores the potential of a new organizational form, that of Social Labs, to support learning on Responsible Research and Innovation (RRI) in standing governance organizations.

This study concludes that Social Labs are a suitable format for enacting the five disciplines as identified by Senge, and a Social Lab may turn into a learning organization, be it a temporary one. Responsibility in research and innovation is conducive for learning in the setting of a Social Lab, and Social Labs act as intermediary organizations, which not merely pass on information among actors but also actively give substantive shape to what they convey from a practice-informed, normative orientation.

This empirical work on RRI-oriented Social Labs therefore suggests that Social Lab–oriented temporary, intermediary learning organizations present a promising form for implementing complex normative policies in a networked, nonhierarchical governance setting.

Based on this research funding and governance organizations in research, policy-makers in other domains may take up and create such intermediary organizations to aid learning in (science) governance.

This research suggests that RRI-oriented Social Labs present a promising form for implementing complex normative policies, thus integrate learning on and by responsible practices in various governance settings.

European science governance is characterized by a network of partial Learning Organization (LOs) and Non-Learning Organization (nLOs) who postpone decision-making on topics around “responsibility” and “solving societal challenges” or delegate authority to reviewers and individual actors, filtering possibilities for collaborative transformation toward RRI. social lab (SLs) are spaces that can address social problems or social challenges in an open, action-oriented and creative manner. As such, they may function as temporary, intermediary LOs bringing together diverse actors from a specific context to work on and learn about issues of science and society where standing organizations avoid doing so. Taken together, SLs may offer temporary organizational structures and spaces to move beyond top-down exercise of power or lack of real change to more open, deliberative and creative forms of sociopolitical coordination between multiple actors cutting across realms of state, practitioners of research and innovation and civil society. By taking the role of temporary LOs, they may support existing research and innovation organizations and research governance to become more flexible and adaptive.

Although place branding (PB) has been researched and practised for several years, the number of studies examining the role of internal stakeholders is still limited. The purpose of this paper is to identify the internal stakeholders associated with PB and particularly, the roles they play in such a process.

Through a systematic literature review in four major global databases, 55 qualified research studies on PB were identified and thoroughly reviewed. Selected studies were examined, analysed and classified according to five categories: bibliographic data, methodologies adopted, conceptual frameworks, empirical foundation and stakeholders’ relevance.

This study shows no existing consensus over the type/role of internal stakeholders in PB research. The findings indicate different methodologies, conceptual frameworks and branding approaches, as well as various empirical foundations in the reviewed studies. The results highlight the significance of internal stakeholders’ influence over PB and their roles in the process. The findings also underline the need for strategies that prioritise stakeholders’ social interactions, collective experiences and affective engagement to develop an inclusive place brand.

This study provides an alternative perspective that underlines the development of inclusive PB frameworks by providing stakeholders with motivational and emotional incentives, capturing their creativity and imagination and encouraging them to participate in the process. Such frameworks entail a transdisciplinary approach to PB as a dynamic process that depends on all internal stakeholders’ active engagement.

This review offers an in-depth perspective on relevant internal stakeholders and their roles in PB. The study further scrutinises the three most related research topics on internal stakeholders, including co-creation, internal branding and participatory PB.