Rethinking Place Branding ― Comprehensive Brand Development for Cities and Regions

As Place Branding has become a widely established but contested practice, there is a dire need to rethink its theoretical foundations and its contribution to development and to re-assert its future. This important new book advances understanding of place branding through its holistic, critical and evidence-based approach. Contributions by world-leading specialists explore a series of crucially significant issues and demonstrate how place branding will contribute more to cultural, economic and social development in the future. The theoretical analysis and illustrative practical examples in combination with the accessible style make the book an indispensable reading for anyone involved in the field.?

Mihalis Kavaratzis is Lecturer in Marketing at the University of Leicester School of Management. His research interests focus on marketing and branding places and tourism destinations as well as on wider branding and communications topics. He has published extensively in academic journals such as Cities, Marketing Theory, Journal of Brand Management, Place Branding and Public Diplomacy. He is co-editor with G.J. Ashworth of ‘Towards effective place brand management: Branding European cities and regions’ (2010, Edward Elgar). He is regularly invited to speak at international conferences and workshops on the topic of place branding. He was co-organiser of the International Place Branding Conference series.

Gregory Ashworth was educated in Geography at the Universities of Cambridge, Reading and London (PhD.1974). He has taught at the Universities of Wales, Portsmouth and since 1979 Groningen, The Netherlands. Since 1994, he is Professor of heritage management and urban tourism in the Department of Planning, Faculty of Spatial Sciences, University of Groningen (NL). He is also visiting professor at the National Business College for Tourism and Travel, Breda, NL and a member of the CUBUS research group into the economics of heritage at the University of Brighton, UK. His main research interests focus on the interrelations between tourism, heritage and place marketing, largely in an urban context. He is author or editor of around 15 books, 100 book chapters, and 200 articles. He received honorary life membership of the Hungarian Geographical Society in 1995, an honorary doctorate from the University of Brighton in 2010 and was knighted for services to Dutch Science in 2011.

Gary Warnaby is currently Reader in Marketing at the University of Liverpool Management School. His research interests focus on the marketing of places, and also retailing. Results of this research are published in various academic journals in both the management and geography disciplines, including Environment and Planning A, Journal of Marketing Management, Journal of Business Research, Marketing Theory, Consumption Markets & Culture, European Journal of Marketing, Area, Cities, and Local Economy. He is co-author of Relationship Marketing: A Consumer Experience Approach, co-editor of Perspectives on Public Relations Research, and has contributed to numerous edited books.