The differences between branding a country, a region and a city: Applying the Brand Box Model

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 parts 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.