Online Place Branding: Identity Features and Facts

Introduction

The chapter entitled “Online Place Branding. Identity Features and Facts” provides a new methodological analysis grid on this topic, highlighting the theoretical perspectives, strategies and ways in which brands are built in the socio-cultural environment by their stakeholders or their legal owners and the valences of the reconstruction or adaptation of brands in the online environment, from the perspective of Web 1.0 and Web 2.0 dynamics, while shaping the core components and the dynamics of the nation brand identity in the second part of the chapter (i.e., the practical approach of the chapter).

The variety of concepts and the multidisciplinary perspectives in approaching the brands and the expression of the identity of places in areas such as economics, psychology, public relations, sociology and cultural studies have structured and defined more clearly the topic of the chapter and the methodological choices applied in the practical stage. Individual directions of research have led to important discoveries (Papadopoulos, 2004, Anholt, 2006, 2008, 2010b, Hanna and Rowley, 2008). Moreover, there are a multitude of published studies that provide clues about how branding a place is used (Anholt, 2005b, 2007, 2010a, Skinner and Kubacki, 2007, Govers and Go, 2009).

Theoretically, the academic resources published in the international scientific flow, with the generic theme of place branding, have contributed to the (relative) establishment of generally accepted aspects, such as: (1) places can be subject to the branding process (Kotler and Gertner, 2002, Kerr, 2006); (2) in many ways, places differ from products (O’Shaughnessy and O’Shaughnessy, 2000, Fan, 2006); and (3) as a consequence, branding a place is a special case of branding that differs from other fields of application (e.g., products or companies), requiring additional theoretical research (Gudjonsson, 2005, Anholt, 2007, Dinnie, 2008) and the development of unique online processes (Simeon, 2001, Florek, Insch and Gnoth, 2006, Pitt et al., 2007, Florek, 2011, Alonso and Bea, 2012).

Thus, the authors followed in the first level of research (i.e., the theoretical and methodological orientation of the chapter), the description of the core concepts (brand, branding, the dynamics and forms of branding associated with consumer products, corporate environment and places, other related structures involved in place branding, such as identity and brand image and the materialized brand frameworks, such as: space, place, online environment, Web 1.0 and Web 2.0) (Briciu and Gulpe, 2018; Briciu, Briciu and Demeter, 2019). Product brands (e.g. cars, food products, clothing, cosmetic products) are easier to manage by brand managers because they are produced, manufactured and their reputation depends on the manufacturers. In this study, we will use the economic approach of treating places as consumer products, from a functional perspective of the brand, from which individuals are seen as ‘homo economicus’, consumer decisions are based on rational motives, so there are transactions between the brand and the consumer which are more or less tangible.

Even though destination or place branding – which we will define in this study by limiting ourselves to the tourism dimension of it – is a relatively new concept, it is generally considered that there is a general agreement among academics and practitioners that destinations (or places, in general) can be branded in the same way as consumer goods and services.