Toward Smart and Strategic Place-Brand Engagement (Abstract of the 6th Annual Conference of International Place Branding Association, 2022)
Liu Danping; Lemmetyinen Arja; Aalto Johanna; Pohjola Tuomas
https://urn.fi/URN:NBN:fi-fe2022110164049
Tiivistelmä
people, businesses, and investments into the area (Papadopoulos & Heslop 2002; Kotler & Gertner 2002;
Papadopoulos et al. 2018). A brand can also strengthen the identity of the inhabitants of a place (e.g.
Jaworski & Fosher 2003; Førde 2016). Value co-creation can enable more stakeholders to contribute
to the place brand; a contribution that can take the form of using a service, making decisions, or
communicating (Tapscott & Williams 2006; Saarijärvi et al. 2013).
This study aims to examine the place-brand engagement dimensions and determine what roles feature
in co-creating a place brand and what type of engagement is needed to strengthen smart strategic place
branding. The study relies on the service dominant logic (Vargo & Lusch 2008) applied in the context of
tourism (Giannopoulos, Piha & Skourtis, 2021) and adopts a service ecosystem perspective to explain
the importance of prevailing institutions and different levels to co-creation in the destination brand.
Following Rihova et al. (2015), a new paradigm of customer-dominant (C-D) logic of value co-creation
is acknowledged proposing that value is produced via experiences and practices located in and affected
by customers’ own social settings (Rihova et al., 2015).
The European Union’s Smart Specialisation (S4) strategy emphasizes the Entrepreneurial Discovery
Process (EDP). The EDP is inherently concerned with systemic stakeholder engagement and co-
creation and aims to facilitate the identification of regional strengths and leveraging them for growth
and sustainability enhancement (Komninos et al., 2021). Different actors make their own contributions
to the place brand, so the joint result always involves the coordination of several factors (Førde 2016).
However, Aaker and Joachimstahler (2002) note that it is important that the brand promise is also
fulfilled strategically. Additionally, the ever-deepening influence of technology and data in a dynamic
place-brand ecosystem context, in the form of the digital transformation and utilization of smart
technologies including social media, big data, and mobile technologies in place-brand development, is
becoming imperative for most organizations targeting economic and wider sustainability goals (Pohjola
et al., 2020; Mariani et al., 2018). In the future, places will build their brands integrating physical and
digital reality (Gretzel, Sigala, Xiang & Koo 2015, 180).
This article utilizes qualitative creative industry data from a case region of Satakunta in western Finland
to complement and justify the theoretical approach to set out the dimensions of engagement with a
place brand. It will then illustrate the interconnectedness of the place-brand actor roles (namely the
Quadruple Helix counterparts) with the regional Smart Specialization Strategy (S4) objectives and their
strategic significance to the place-brand. Particular attention will be paid to the role of a university in a
place- brand value co-creation ecosystem. The case data is from three development projects that have
been implemented in the province of Satakunta in Finland (2020-2022).
Kokoelmat
- Rinnakkaistallenteet [19207]