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Abstract
Branding has become one of the most powerful tools in marketing strategy. There has been a general agreement among academics and practitioners that places can be branded in the same way as consumer goods and services. Destination branding is a relatively new concept, however, and there is a lack of empirical academic research on the topic. This exploratory study uses the de Chernatony Brand Box Model and applies it to countries, regions and cities. The study was developed in order to understand and clarify whether the same branding techniques should be applied to these three different types of places. The results point to differences between countries when compared with regions and cities. Countries are so functionally diverse they should leverage the emotive or representational pans of their brand identity, while regions and cities, being smaller in scale, should leverage their more functional facets. It seems that regions have more in common with cities from a branding point of view, and this has implications for branding strategies for all three types of tourist destinations.
INTRODUCTION
Travel and tourism has become a global industry and is widely considered to be one of the fastest growing industries in the world, if not the fastest growing industry.1
In terms of employment, travel and tourism is the largest industry in the world. In 2000, the sector directly and indirectly generated 11.7 per cent of global gross domestic product and nearly 200 million jobs.2 Since 1998, 'tourism ranks first among world export groups, ahead of petroleum, motor vehicles and electronic equipment'.3 In this highly competitive environment - where the objective is to attract more inward investment, visitors and jobs - countries, regions and cities began applying to their 'product' certain marketing techniques previously developed for consumer goods. One of the marketing techniques applied is branding, and the aim of the research reported in this paper is to examine if there are differences between branding different types of tourist destinations: a country, a region or a city.
Although destination branding is a new concept, there is a general agreement among academics and practitioners that places can be branded in much the same way as consumer goods and services.4-8 A successful brand has recently been defined as: 'an identifiable product, service,...