Branding places: applying brand personality concept to cities

Abstract

Purpose - In recent years, brand personality as a branding construct has received considerable interest, which has led to a significant effort to develop tools to measure the personality of brands. Although the majority of these studies have focused on the brand personality of conventional product brands, the new boundaries of marketing obviously necessitate the application of branding constructs to non-traditional products such as places. This study aims to focus on brand personalities of places, and to examine the applicability of this concept for city brands. Design/methodology/approach - The research employs a factor analysis method based on data collected from 898 college students. Findings - The findings of the study reveal that differentiating places with regard to their brand personalities is achievable. The paper introduces two new dimensions of brand personality for cities. Originality/value - The extraction of two new factors that contribute to place brand personalities is considered a major contribution of this research to the marketing literature.