Tracing the Origins of Place Branding Research: A Bibliometric Study of Concepts in Use (1980–2018)

Wenting Ma, Daan Schraven, Mark de Bruijne, Martin De Jong, Lu Haiyan

Research output: Contribution to journalArticleScientificpeer-review

47 Citations (Scopus)
103 Downloads (Pure)

Abstract

Place branding is seriously studied in various academic disciplines. Its impact on strategic development plays a vital role in processes of sustainable urban transformation. Place branding originated in tourism management and over time its research focus spilled over and evolved in environmental science, urban studies and public administration. Scholars and policy makers are currently faced with a myriad of concepts in place branding research, which show considerable overlap but should be carefully distinguished from each other. To increase our understanding of this body of research, this article observes a strong pattern of the concepts in use, in their references to location types (i.e. urban, city, destination, place) and broadcasting activities (branding, marketing, promotion). It builds on this observation by collecting studies from the Scopus database by location type and broadcasting activities (LT–BA) reference pairs and systematically analysing and reviewing these from 1980 to 2018. A total of 2,665 articles and reviews were identified and analysed based on (1) occurrences per reference pair, (2) co-occurrences per reference pair, and (3) co-occurrences for each reference pair with other concepts. On that basis, the origin and evolution of the research field including multiple reference pairs in use is explored and described.
Original languageEnglish
Article number2999
Pages (from-to)2999
JournalSustainability
Volume11
Issue number11
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 2019

Keywords

  • Bibliometric analysis
  • Conceptual development
  • Place branding
  • Place marketing
  • Place promotion
  • Scopus

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