Meta method approach; In the significant areas of urban brand studies in the field of competitiveness

Subject Areas :

pardis pakan ¹ (Phd student, department of urbanism, mashhad branch, Islamic azad university, mashhad, iran.)
Toktam Hanaee ² (Associate Professor,, department of urbanism, mashhad branch, Islamic azad university, mashhad, iran.(Corresponding Author)[e-mail])

Received: 2023-08-08 Accepted : 2023-09-21 Published : 2023-08-23

Keywords: Competitiveness, City Brand, Challenge of Meaning, Meta Method Approach,

Abstract :

Nowadays, cities are competing in various fields. Not only is this competition longer relevant to neighboring cities, but it also happens in a network of global cities. Urban branding is one of the most important tools of competitiveness on different scales from urban to global levels. So far, the concept of city branding has been discussed by various fields such as tourism, marketing, economy, art, media and advertising in the form of different topics such as brand creation and evaluation, brand regeneration, urban brand strengthening and city brand management. However, the multidimensionality of the concept of urban branding and its connection with different fields and sciences as well as the context of its occurrence in the environment and system has brought plenty of major challenges and difficulties to the research in this field of study. One of the most important of them is the challenge of meaning and efficient and comprehensive scientific methodology. The present research is carried out with combined approaches at the same time to reach a theoretical consensus, and the presentation of a conceptual model is done with an emphasis on scientific and creative methodology. In terms of practical philosophical orientation, it uses a practical purpose and exploratory-descriptive nature. By examining and studying previous bodies of research, the present study seeks to answer the question of how and with what kinds of processes, methods, and tools in the context of urban studies, city branding can be done in the domain of city competitiveness. Therefore, it summarizes and analyzes previous studies through a meta-method approach. After defining the main research question, relevant scientific sources from different channels and databases were selected, which included Web of Science (for foreign articles) and Iran Doc (for Ph.D. theses). Next, data sources were identified according to the parameters as follows: 1) the use of primary data (except review articles), 2) the thematic relationship of previous studies with the goal and in response to the question of the current research, and 3) the timeline. The present article studies urban branding based on the paradigm shift of the concept over time, into five categories including (1) advertising and urban recovery, (2) urban marketing, (3) presentation of 12 models of urban branding, (4) the city brand management and the evaluation and effectiveness of city branding, and finally (5) the emergence of urban studies into the concept of city branding. Finally, the results of the study indicate that the use of purely quantitative or qualitative methods is accompanied by serious inadequacies in the final results and ultimately leads to a one-dimensional approach to the subject. Therefore, considering the complexity of the city system and the interdisciplinary nature of the concept of urban branding, it is the most appropriate approach to plan future studies and explain the place of urban science in the concept of city branding. In addition to that, it is methodologically considered a hybrid approach and technically an interdisciplinary approach because it provides the possibility of using scientific models and tools from different disciplines and leads to the creative application of scientific methods from various disciplines of urban studies and novel scientific tools and can be an effective step towards creating common literature in the atmosphere of scientific discourse in this field.