Which city theme has the strongest local brand equity for Hong Kong: green, creative or smart city?

Chung-Shing Chan ()
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Chung-Shing Chan: The Chinese University of Hong Kong

Place Branding and Public Diplomacy, 2019, vol. 15, issue 1, No 2, 12-27

Abstract: Abstract Greenness, creativity and smartness are three common themes that cities often use to market or brand themselves as attractive and sustainable places. These themes have their own trajectories of theoretical development, but their ability to generate values to the people shows that a theme has the potential to be transformed into a promising brand. This suggests an approach of studying the brand equity of these themes based on a number of dimensions suggested in the literature: brand awareness, perceived brand quality, brand associations and brand loyalty. Since local residents play an indispensable role in place branding and sustainable urban development, this paper presents a study that aims to reveal the level of brand equity of the green, creative and smart city themes of Hong Kong as perceived by local residents (n = 263). The results suggest that a smart city theme carries more stable and higher brand equity when compared with green and creative themes. However, local people do have high aspirations of greenness and creativity for Hong Kong. Regression also builds up three models showing the locally perceived determinants of a successful green, creative and smart city for Hong Kong, respectively. The findings also highlight that city themes indeed overlap in nature, where the common attributes across themes may become the important clues to catch stakeholders’ attention.

Keywords: City brand equity; City theme; Creative city; Green city; Smart city (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2019
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (6)

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DOI: 10.1057/s41254-018-0106-x

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