品牌战略的实践研究:留学生作业

我们中的许多人通常会在电视、广播、印刷媒体广告,广告牌或网页上看见有关旅游活动的广告，这些区域是非常特殊的地方(国家、城市、城镇或特定区域),这些地方会着重突出科技和工业方面的成就和特定文化及历史特点,甚至借用良好的税收环境打广告,所有这些在登广告处吸引人们的地方，成为当地居民、旅游投资者和吸引游客的一重要物质。所有这些活动广告看起来像包含了许多区域,实则上是各地旅游景点，试图在全球市场建立自己的品牌而相互竞争。因此,品牌竞争已成为全球中极其重要的竞争。

Kavaratzis和Ashwort(2005)认为如果这些区域各自独特之处使得他们互相区分开，那么这些区域本身就是品牌化的实体。这些区域也很有必要通过展示他们对政治、经济、社会心理等领域独特理解与追求来使自己与众不同。在与同行业竞争时，强有利的品牌形象对区域是一个重要的归因。

区域品牌建立是否成功也取决于各种因素，例如客户信任度和客户满意度等因素,除此之外还有一些个性特点，例如友善或对旅游景点描述的真实性。然而，与商品品牌构建和产品服务相比，区域品牌构建是一个更为困难和复杂的过程，，这是一个事实，因为它包含许多要考虑的因素和组合,如旅游景点、地理、自然资源、居民的特点,当地产品,机构和基础设施。区域的特点是难以定义的,他们的形象定义更为复杂,他们之间的类似点是提供多样化的产品和服务。

Many of us usually come across to touristic campaigns on television, radio, advertisements on printed media, billboards, web sites that are amplifying the properties of places (nations, cities, towns or specific regions), highlighting the technological and industrial achievements, specifying cultural and historical characteristics, even citing favorable tax environments, all of this to attract people to become residents, investors, visitors at the advertised places. All of these activities may look like numerous things, but it is only places trying to compete with one another in the global marketplace by building their own brands. Therefore, place branding has become extremely important in the competing world.

Kavaratzis and Ashwort (2005) suggest that places are brand-able entities if their characteristics allocate them from each other. Places have always felt a need to differentiate themselves from each other to define their individuality in pursuit of various political, economic or socio-psychological subjects. For a place to have a strong and a positive brand image is an important attribution in this competition with others.

Place brands are also built on factors such as trust and customer satisfaction, and several personality features such as friendliness or reliability that describes places as brands. However it is a fact that place branding is a more difficult and complicated process as compared to branding of goods and services since it includes many factors and combinations to consider, such as tourist attractions, geography, natural resources, residents` characteristics, local products, institutions and infrastructure. Characteristics of places are harder to define, and their image is more complex, and the associations they resemble are more numerous and diverse than goods and services.

A place's branding needs to be built on qualities which are positive, attractive, unique, sustainable and relevant to many different people around the world. A place branding strategy assesses the most realistic, most competitive and most compulsive strategic vision for the place (city, region, or country) and guarantees that this vision is supported, strengthened and enforced by every act of investment and communication that is done between that place and the rest of the world. However unless every government department or agency continuously communicates and demonstrates the same developed brand, people living or visiting in other places will quickly be confused regarding what the place brand stands for.

There needs to be people or divisions who are required to work as a team to develop a place branding strategy. Places for which branding will be done need to involve all of the key accounts who can invest in and communicate what is occurring in that place and what is being done to develop it with a shared and agreed vision. All of the associations, people and societies, that have a benefit in the future development of the place with the branding, need to be included in the process. The investments that are made during the development of the place, the actions taken and the communications put out are all important points of how the city brand message will be communicated. The most important ways that need to be involved in the communication process are tourism, people, culture and education, government, private sector, and investment of that place (Figure 1). The policies of the government, and the investment done by the private sector, touristic facilities, attractions and the workforce of the community communicate powerful messages about that place to potential visitors and how it operates.

Figure 1: Common Channels that a Place Communicates through (The Place Brand Hexagon, Placebrands 2003)

To be able to market a place and create a brand that can be managed in order to exploit the whole potential of that place, it is very important to understand its current image. Image is defined as “the sum of the total impressions the consumers receive from many sources” (Herzog, 1963). Place image management is the ongoing process of researching a place`s image among its audiences, segmenting and targeting its specific image, positioning the place`s benefits to support an existing image or create a new image, and communicating those benefits to the target audiences (Kotler, Haider and Rein, 1993). A powerful and positive place image provides an absolute competitive advantage. In the current framework of the globalized economy, places are competing with each other to attract tourists, businessmen, students, residents, etc. in order to develop better and faster.

When compared to past actions, places learned to segment markets and buyers, and to target their products and services to specific customers based on search and analysis. They attempt to define themselves as distinctive places with specific competitive advantages for target customers. Niche products and services are being created to add value. As Bailey (1989) amplifies, in the rapidly changing world conditions, place branding emerged as a promising integrating process linking a place`s potential competitive advantages to overall economic development goals.

区域品牌构建的重要性—IMPORTANCE OF PLACE BRANDING

Big changes in the social and political fabric of modern society make the more public oriented approach of place branding a necessity in the 21st century. A globalised world is a market place where a place has to compete with another place for its share of interest, importance, spending, assurance and goodwill. The disciplines of the marketplace should be taken in to consideration for inspiration about how to evolve and grow in this world.

According to Keller (2003) there are many advantages of strong brands, one of which is that a strong brand has greater loyalty and less vulnerability to competitive actions and crises. Also strong brands have larger margins and greater trade cooperation and support. Another advantage is that strong brands increase marketing effectiveness and create possible licensing opportunities, also developing additional brand extension opportunities. All of these advantages may be transferred to places.

Loyalty for a place may present itself through repeated visits by the tourists or civic pride by the residents. Less vulnerability to competitive events may translate in to a business not relocating when an apparently better option is offered, or an image not being damaged despite bad press. Larger margins are related to premium prices through brand equity and can be seen in higher property prices in places with strong reputations. Greater trade cooperation and support may be revealed in local businesses promoting the place and cooperating the place`s strategies. Increased marketing effectiveness can be achieved through association with a place brand and capitalized on across city-wide activity. Private sector interest in a place can lead to opportunities for local authorities to raise revenues through licensing their brands. Additional brand extension opportunities are more difficult to apply to place brands.

As stated above, a place brand is the foundation that helps to make a place desirable as a business location, touristic destination or a place to call home (to be a resident). Development of a brand strategy for a city leverages the features of that place to provide a relevant and compelling promise to a target audience. The branding strategy is and emotionally shared vision that influences actions.

The most important reason for a place to have a brand strategy is to stimulate its economic growth. Also poor images among external and internal constituents can be shifted positively via a strong brand image. A common vision can be created for the communities` future and provide a consistent representation by a place with strong branding. Places that are locally, regionally or globally known and appealing to people are mostly places with a successful branding strategy.

A brand is the DNA of a place, indicating what it is made of and how it passes from generation to generation. Building a strong brand for a place is inevitable in the 21st century to distinguish from others and most importantly promote the economic activities and increase the awareness of that place.

如何发展区域品牌—HOW TO DEVELOP A PLACE BRAND

Place branding is being done to improve places` positioning to capture touristic and business travels and also places to live and study. A comprehensive brand strategy is the first step for a place to build a strong brand image. It will help the place develop a long term vision that is relevant and compelling to the target group.

For a place to initiate a strong brand strategy, eight steps shown in the below figure can be followed.

Figure 2: Eight Steps for Developing Place Branding Strategy (Prophet, 2006)

确定目标—DEFINE OBJECTIVES

When a place branding is decided to be done, first of all objectives for the branding strategy should be defined clearly. What the branding project is trying to achieve, and what specific results are being expected from the development of the branding strategy should be defined conclusively and be addressed in greater detail as implementation starts. The most important issue at this step is that the decision makers understand the aims and objectives of the branding attempt.

The goal of the branding strategy needs to be clearly stated whether it is to attract and retain residents, or attract visitors or investors, or whether it is to change the existing perception regarding the place. This information should be prioritized to help defining the scope of the strategy.

A benchmark can be created for defining the goals of the strategy. Places with similar identities, which have faced similar challenges and successfully overcome those challenges by initiating a brand strategy, can be taken as example and the successes can be analyzed to examine. Result can be taken as a benchmark by viewing to what degree the economy has improved and the community has developed at those places, what the indicators of success are, which of these indicators are the most appropriate for the developing project, etc.

In order for a branding strategy to be successful, the goals and objectives of that strategy need to be defined explicitly in the beginning of the branding project.

明确和了解目标群总—DEFINE AND UNDERSTAND THE TARGET AUDIENCE

The second step at building a successful branding strategy is defining and understanding to whom a place is targeting. Therefore the target group needs to be defined in details. The questions; who the audience is consisting of, what their current opinions and attitudes of the place are and what they need that a place can provide need to be answered. Then it should be examined whether the place which branding project is being done for can meet those needs. If it is decided that it does, the ways of implementing should be researched.

To define and understand the target group, focus groups and surveys need to be done to the potential target audiences whom are people from business sector, residents of that place, previous and potential visitors, local media executives, and student groups.

The most difficult step in place branding is selecting and defining the target group. It is important to minimize the number of audiences and prioritize them according to their importance. Going broad across multiple target groups can cause a numerous of general insights, while going deep on a few groups can uncover more detailed and specific insights.

When the target group is clearly defined, next step is to figure out a way to reach them for research. This is as challenging as defining the target group since it is not possible to reach every audience in the same way. For instance it may be possible to reach residents by focus groups and surveys while reaching business men through individual interviews.

确认目前品牌形象—IDENTIFY CURRENT BRAND IMAGE

The next step in developing a branding strategy for a place is identifying the current brand image of the place.

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