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The purpose of this paper is to examine wellness as a means of self-branding. The phenomenon is addressed through the introduction of a new concept – wellness branding – and by identifying those wellness practices that are currently most valued.

A series of focus group interviews were conducted in the USA and Finland. Altogether, 12 discussion sessions (N = 57) were carried out, 6 in each country.

Both wellness and self-branding represent current forms of identity and lifestyle construction and self-promotion. Moreover, they represent an entrepreneurial view of the self, which emphasizes self-governance. The findings indicate that wellness has moved beyond the merely physical dimension, to significantly involve emotional/mental, spiritual, social and intellectual aspects. This further strengthens the transformational nature of wellness and the increasing need for balancing one’s life in order to reach one’s optimal self. The logic of wellness branding involves the creation of one’s optimal, balanced self while communicating it to others.

This paper makes insightful contributions to the branding literature by broadening the scope of self-branding to a new and timely context. The paper further adds to the consumer research literature by addressing wellness as a form of transformative consumption and an essential part of the current self-care culture.

To the authors’ knowledge, this paper is the first to discuss self-branding in the context of wellness, introducing a new concept of wellness branding, thus offering a novel area for research.

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.

The purpose of this paper is to analyse the role of a place’s name as the carrier of identity and heritage from the residents’ perspective. The authors assess the extent to which names of municipalities carry the place’s heritage, and how this can further be transferred to the place brand. The context is a situation in which a municipality changes its name, or is at the risk of doing so, as a result of municipal consolidation.

The authors conducted a large survey in the south-western Finland in spring 2013. The survey questionnaire was posted to 5,020 randomly selected residents, and the final sample comprised 1,380 recipients. The authors offer a framework for operationalising place heritage, comprising four components: history, place essence, symbols and residential permanence.

Most respondents attached importance to the name of their home town. The majority also felt that a name change would mean losing part of the place’s history. A strong place heritage proved to correlate positively with the importance of the municipality name.

The developed framework for place heritage can serve as a tool for place branding studies and practical place branding. A stable name has an essential role in branding places. The authorities should understand the crucial relationship between place name, heritage and identity, and their importance to the residents.

To the authors’ knowledge, this study is the first to report empirical research on the relation between place names and place branding from the heritage perspective.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the country image of Finland among potential travellers and potential consumers of Finnish products. Three research questions are addressed, each of which contributes to the overall aim: What is the level of awareness about Finland among the respondents? How is the awareness constructed in terms of dimensions? Where does the image stem from (the source)?

A survey was conducted among US, French and Swiss university students. Given the high number of respondents who had not visited Finland, the analysis focused on non‐visitors. Six hypotheses were formulated based on existing theory.

Awareness is a key indicator of people's knowledge about the existence of a country. Branding may be an elementary tool in enhancing awareness as well as altering or reinforcing stereotypical views. The results of this study bring out the cross‐cultural aspects.

Including the respondents’ sources of information enhances the results of previous studies on country image. The findings contribute to the theoretical discussion on the source of the image and the factors that affect it.

Knowledge of the information sources and their role in image building will help destination marketers to influence potential travellers, including non‐visitors, and thereby increase the likelihood of a first or repeat visit.

To the authors’ knowledge, this is the first study to focus on awareness of a country among non‐visitors.

The paper aims to apply the co‐creation paradigm to nation branding in order to analyze how the identity and image of a nation brand are inter‐twined in terms of levels and dimensions, respectively.

This explorative study was conducted among 178 Finnish university students, who were asked to build a program for branding Finland. The students worked in small groups of two or three. In all, 75 reports were handed in, of which those (67) targeted at tourists were taken for analysis. The analysis was conducted in accordance with a model modified from Gnoth.

Its image is a critical stimulus in motivating tourists to visit a destination. A nation brand is at the crossroads of three levels of identity and a fragmented set of images. The idea is to exploit the right fragments in line with the destination and the target groups.

The empirical analysis was based on data gathered from MBA students. The intention is to extend the sampling to include branding experts, company representatives and delegates of the Finnish Nation Brand Committee in order to build up a more specific picture of a nation's brand identity and image. The examination is restricted to one, rather homogeneous country, Finland. It would be of interest to conduct comparable analyses in other, more heterogeneous countries. Another avenue for future research would be to test the market, in other words to question potential visitors about their perceptions, and thereby to determine whether the nation's brand identity and image coincide.

This paper contributes to the theoretical discussion on the role of branding in the marketing of places, herein called nations. For practitioners, it highlights the importance of managing the brand “bottom up”, in other words starting from the people.

The study focused on dimensions of consumer‐based brand equity, and especially the recall level of brand awareness. The purpose was to identify any statistically significant differences in brand recall in various product categories and different national contexts.

This observation study explored relations between consumers' awareness of brands, attitudes related to brand equity, and changes in cultural context. Questionnaire data was collected from university students in four countries: the USA, Finland, France and Sweden. The respondents were asked about the brands of beverages, computers and cell‐phones that first came into their minds, and their attitudes in relation to brand equity.

It seems that the four dimensions of brand equity co‐vary depending on the cultural context. The results also revealed a relationship between TOMA and the national context that was generalizable in the three product categories.

Culture as a contextual factor of consumer brand equity should be studied further. The findings should be replicated with non‐student samples in other product categories and cultural contexts. SEM could be used to establish the causality and direction of the relationships between the various dimensions of culture and brand equity.

The findings on the effect of the cultural context on brand equity are of practical relevance to marketing managers: they should tailor their branding strategies accordingly.

The results gave valid and reliable evidence of a relationship between the TOMA dimension of brand equity and the national cultural context.

Brand heritage is acknowledged as one of the future priorities in branding research. Adopting it in an international context is challenging. In order to maximise its use it is necessary to know how strong it and the target country's cultural heritage are. Accordingly, the aim of the study is to construct a pioneering operationalisation of both brand and cultural heritage.

The study begins with a discussion on the focal concepts. Definitions are proposed and suggestions for operationalisation put forward. Thereafter, the concepts are applied in an analysis of brand heritage in different countries.

It is suggested that brand heritage is a mixture of the history as well as the consistency and continuity of core values, product brands, and visual symbols. A country's cultural heritage could be conceived of as homogeneity and endurance.

The preliminary operationalisation of the concept needs to be further tested. Nevertheless, the clarification and suggestions offered here should open up opportunities for further research.

The exploitation of brand heritage in international markets is likely to be further accentuated. The operationalisations generated are easy for practitioners to apply, enabling companies to better evaluate what brand heritage means for them and to effectively plan its use in an international setting.

To the authors' knowledge, this study is the first to suggest operationalisations of brand heritage and cultural heritage.