Erik Braun

Copenhagen Business School · Department of Marketing

This article studies in how far participation of stakeholders enhances their active support for place brands, conceptualized in this study as Brand Citizenship Behavior (BCB). Combining insights from governance and branding theory this article uses survey data (N = 162) among stakeholders involved in branding processes of two Dutch regions. The ana...

This study introduces the evolutionary concept of assortative sociality and explores how it moderates pandemic anxiety effects on attitudes towards tourism and travel decisions. Based on a large-scale online survey (N = 4630) conducted in three European countries, we demonstrate that COVID-19 anxiety triggered assortative sociality, which reflects...

Against the background of regional development, this article analyses the rise and fall of ‘thin identities’, which tend to be utilitarian and deployed to promote regional development. We focus on two constructed regional identities in the Greater Pearl River Delta (GPRD) in China: Pearl River Delta (PRD) and Guangdong‐Hong Kong‐Macau Greater Bay A...

For several years, the Brexit has been an ongoing political crisis with high uncertainty that nonetheless affects us in many ways. Until now, the academic debate has mainly emphasized the political, economic and legal consequences, while disregarding the social-psychological effects of the crisis. This article examined the relationships between tru...

After hotels in many countries were forced to close in government-imposed lockdowns during the COVID-19 pandemic, there is an inherent need to communicate how they deal with the coronavirus to motivate guests to visit. However, lack of knowledge about how to persuasively communicate about hotels’ cleaning programs for COVID-19 can challenge the ind...

Pandemics are affecting tourism in many ways. Being a niche research field before, the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic created a strong urgency to develop this topic. For researching pandemic-induced changes in tourist beliefs and travel behaviour, we developed a construct that measures the intra-personal anxiety of travellers (and non-travellers):...

The current refugee crisis has broad ramifications for societies. In the domain of tourism, such socio-political or human-made disasters raise questions about security, but may also affect perceptions of a destination's openness and hospitality. This paper discusses the relative importance of security and openness in terms of destination image and...

Purpose: 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 sense in many places. The paper proposes...

This article analyses whether involving various stakeholder groups in place marketing has effects on the content of place brands, and on how place marketing influences other policy fields, i.e. spatial planning and tourism/leisure policies. The research applies structural equation modelling to nationwide surveys in the Netherlands and Germany among...

This article explores how place reputation is affected by two strategies that are frequently incorporated in a strategic place branding framework. The first strategy is stimulating an open place brand process in which there are more than enough opportunities for an open debate and discussion in the process of developing and implementing a place bra...

This article contributes to a broader understanding of how the branding of places affects both residents and tourists. While branding often relies on simplified messages, the effectiveness of such strategies for complex brands remains questionable. Residents in particular possess a confounded knowledge of the place and could disagree with simplifie...

Place brand managers often disregard the complexity of place brands, as do their counterparts in the academic arena: they repeatedly use simple explorative descriptions of certain place brands, rather than a precise measurement. Thus, this chapter aims to identify and discuss measurement approaches that could prove useful in place branding. Theref...

In recent years, Europe has seen a strong increase in cross-border cooperation. Under different headings, most commonly the Euregion, cross-border partnerships are being set up in all member states of the EU and beyond. This trend is hailed as the regionalization of Europe, or the rise of the region state, and is actively supported by EU initiative...

The study presented in this paper is one of the first quantitative, empirical studies addressing the effectiveness of place branding. This paper assesses whether three different strategies for place brand communication have a positive effect on attracting residents and visitors. The expectation is that this effect is mediated by the place brand ima...

Why are some regions and cities so good at attracting talented people, creating high-level knowledge, and producing exciting new ideas and innovations? What are the ingredients of success? Can innovative cities be created and stimulated, or do they just flourish by mere chance? This book analyses the development and management of innovation systems...

Place marketing is increasingly used by local governments to enhance the image of cities and achieve policy goals related to economic and spatial development. Place marketing has become part of local and regional governance processes. Critics have argued that place marketing is often applied in top-down ways that exclude citizens. Drawing on survey...

Place marketing and citizen participation : Branding as strategy to address the emotional dimension of policy making ? Place marketing is increasingly used by local governments to enhance the image of cities and achieve policy goals related to economic and spatial development. Place marketing has become part of local and regional governance process...

Why are some regions and cities so good at attracting talented people, creating high-level knowledge, and producing exciting new ideas and innovations? What are the ingredients of success? Can innovative cities be created and stimulated, or do they just flourish by mere chance? This book analyses the development and management of innovation systems...

Place marketing is increasingly being used as a governance strategy for managing perceptions about regions, cities, and towns. What are the most important obstacles to implementing place marketing? Based on a survey of 274 public managers involved in place marketing in the Netherlands, this article analyzes the main obstacles as perceived by public...

Purpose – This paper deals with the importance of residents within place branding. The aim of this paper is to examine the different roles that residents play in the formation and communication of place brands and explores the implications for place brand management. Design/methodology/approach – The paper is based on theoretical insights drawn fr...

The current volume turns into account the most representative papers accepted and presented at the Permanent Study Group «Public and Nonprofit Marketing» of the 33rd Annual Conference of the European Group for Public Administration (EGPA), which was held in Bucharest during 7-10 September 2011 and was organized by the National School of Political S...

The assumption in the governance literature is that stakeholder involvement enhances the chances of success of governance processes. Place branding has a strong governance character in that it involves many different actors and the government is one of the parties in the branding process. This article draws on survey data acquired from professional...

The assumption in the governance literature is that stakeholder involvement enhances the chances of success of governance processes. Place branding has a strong governance character in that it involves many different actors and the government is one of the parties in the branding process. This article draws on survey data acquired from professional...

City branding has joined the vocabulary of a growing number of politicians and city officials across Europe. While most academic research in this field has focused on the concept of city branding itself, the subject of this article is the implementation of city branding. In this conceptual paper it is argued that the governance setting in which cit...

Inleiding Citymarketing is volop in beweging. In het begin van de jaren tachtig was het aantal gemeenten met een citymarketingbeleid nog relatief klein; inmiddels doen veel meer gemeenten aan citymarketing1. Anno 2010 is citymarketing één van de gemeentelijke beleidsterreinen. Citymarketing komt terug in collegeakkoorden, er zijn wethouders met cit...

Since the start of the new millennium we have seen a growing number of cities announcing a branding strategy. Branding is not just being adopted by the ‘usual suspects’ such as the global cities, the capitals and well-known tourist destinations, but also by smaller, specialized cities and so-called second cities.1 The latter are a very interesting...

Nowadays cities compete strongly with each other for attracting tourists, investors, companies, or talents. Place marketers therefore try to establish the place as a brand, promoting it to different audiences. But the perception of a place (brand) differs between those potential 'customers' and a conceptual foundation is still missing. Following a...

The number of cities claiming to make use of branding has been growing considerably in the last decade. Competition is one of the key drivers for cities to establish their place as a brand and promoting that place to visitors, investors, companies and residents. Unfortunately, place marketers often believe that the place brand is a controllable and...

Recently, a new consensus about the role of cities as the motors of the regional, national and European economy has emerged. However, there is also substantial evidence that social problems are growing in many cities. Linking economic competitiveness to increasing social inclusion is a crucial challenge for policy-makers at all levels of government...

We aim to identify the implications of corporate citizenship in general, and of collaboration between public and private actors in particular, for the development of cities. We analyse the changing behaviour of proactive firms in the field of community involvement, the spatial dimension of corporate citizenship, the added value of cross-sector part...

This paper analyses and compares the dynamics of clusters in nine urban regions in Europe. The cluster perspective in the studying of growth processes in cities has added value because, increasingly, economic activities cross the boundaries of traditional economic sectors, as networks are becoming the leading organisational principle. The integral...

"Europe's towns and cities remain its primary source of wealth creation and the centre of its social and cultural development. However there are rising problems relating to rapid economic adjustments. It is clear that new efforts are necessary to strenghten or restore the role of Europe's cities as places of social and cultural integration, as sour...

Fundamental developments such as globalisation, informationalisation, and European integration lead to increased competition and interaction among metropolitan regions in search for mobile investment and trade. Next to the 'traditional' location factors and quality-of-life factors that determine the quality of the business environment, the ability...