This article develops and tests a model through multi-sampling comparison by considering city brand attractiveness as antecedents of a memorable city brand experience. A memorable city brand experience is an antecedent of city brand love; and tourist-based city brand equity (TCBE) as a consequence of a memorable city brand experience and city brand love. This study examined 169 tourists who came to Jakarta and 200 tourists who came to Yogyakarta as respondents respectively. The analysis used in this study is the structural equation modeling (SEM) using AMOS 20 as the supporting equipment. The results of this study show similar results between samples of Jakarta and Yogyakarta in the components of the influence of city brand attractiveness on memorable city brand experience; memorable city brand experience on city brand love; and memorable city brand experience on city brand equity. Different result between the samples of Jakarta and Yogyakarta is shown in the component of the influence of city brand love on tourist based city brand equity.
Top1. Introduction
The concept of city branding is a growing issue in Indonesia. Every government in various cities in Indonesia tries to introduce tourist destination, city strength, and various other things to attract investors and tourists. The governments make promotion by creating an image that corresponds to the city. The purpose is to attract many investors and tourists (Rothschild, Alon, & Fetscherin, 2012; Zenker & Beckmann, 2013). Kotler, Asplund, Rein, and Haider (1999) explain that there are some major targets of place marketing, such as, visitors, residents and employees, business and industry, and export markets. If the investors and tourists are keen to come to a city, it will benefit the city in term of both material and non-material.
There are several researches on city branding done by researchers. There are city branding conducted to the cities in Australia (Merrilees, Miller, & Herington, 2009), China (Rothschild et al., 2012; Shunying, 2013; Zhang & Zhao, 2009; Zhao, 2015), Colombia (Hernandez-Garcia, 2013), Malaysia (Hew, Tong, & Goh, 2014), Poland (Glinska & Kilon, 2014), Turin (Vanolo, 2008), Wales (Clifton, 2014), Spain (Saez, Perianez, & Mediano, 2013), and Germany (Jarvisalo, 2012; Zenker & Beckmann, 2013). In city branding, there is innovation (Merrilees, Miller, & Herington, 2013). There is also a method of doing iconic city branding (Jencks, 2005; Riza, Doratli, & Fasli, 2012). The concept of city branding is associated to Quality of Life (Riza et al., 2012) in which the quality of life means the satisfaction, fulfillment and sense of being alive as the visitors of a spot (Andrews, 2001).
Practically, city branding is done through some methods. City branding is done to show the specificity. The specificity is intended to pursue a variety of economic, political, social and psychological purpose (Kavaratzis & Ashworth, 2005). Kaplan, Yurt, Guneri, and Kurtulus (2010) explain that the concept of place brand is an implementation of marketing strategies which allow the city to be different in a competition through proper placement of their economic, social, political or cultural resources/competencies. City branding should concern with how culture and history, economic growth and social development, infrastructure and architecture, landscape and environment can be combined into the sold identity which can be accepted by everyone ((Zhang & Zhao, 2009). Lindstedt (2015) describes that a method of city branding can be done by a campaign for the city, revitalizing buildings that characterize the city and integrate these buildings with promotional campaigns. Kavaratzis (2008) sees the importance of using a variety of events to conduct city branding.
Basically, to assess the brand of a city or country, there are various measurements made by several consultants or appraiser organizations of city or state. There are various techniques for measuring the success of city branding, such as the Anholt City Brand Index (Anholt, 2006), Meta-analyzes (Gertner, 2011; Lucarelli & Berg, 2011), Investor Based Brand Equity (Jacobsen, 2009, 2012). There are also some other measurements such as Saffron European City Brand Barometer and Creative City International-Vitaly Index. The main focus of this study is to assess the brand of the city from the perspective of tourists or people who have made several trips to cities in Indonesia. In this study, we focus on the cities of Jakarta and Yogyakarta.