Inspired by recent scholarly discussions on the geographical dimensions of
place branding, including several recently published cross-disciplinary literature
reviews, this paper presents an in-depth analysis of place branding research
published in human geography. A total of 86 research articles published
in human geography from 2000 to 2012 were analyzed. On the basis of
this analysis, the paper makes three claims: first, it is time for place branding
research to move beyond a conceptual understanding of place branding as the
adaption of corporate branding to places. Second, in human geography, place
branding research is primarily empirically based, which can be seen as an
argument against the previous claims of scarce empirical basis for the theoretical
claims made in place branding studies. Third, by using perspectives and
theories from human geography in the study of place branding, it is argued
that geographers make distinctive conceptual contributions to the research
field of place branding.
The literature analysis is divided into two sections, a quantitative section
and a qualitative section. The quantitative findings of the literature analysis
illustrate how the empirical research has a strong overrepresentation of qualitative
studies that combine two or more methods and that are primarily concerned
with large cities and capitals located in Europe, Asia and North America.
Therefore, one of the conclusions of the paper is to suggest that the current
research field contains several “gaps” in terms of methodological approaches,
scale and geographical locations with regards to empirical studies in place
branding.
The qualitative findings presented in the paper suggest that there are seven
distinct perspectives in the human geography research on place branding. These
perspectives are the following: (1) place identities and place images, (2)
urban entrepreneurialism, (3) the theoretical relationship between branding
and geography, (4) place branding practices, (5) democracy and social exclusion,
(6) creative places and (7) geographical co-branding. Each of these perspectives
is connected to other well-established research approaches in human
geography, thus drawing on different concepts and frameworks in their examinations
of place branding. In conclusion, joining the quantitative and qualitative
findings together, this paper suggests that place branding research has
moved beyond a routine conceptualization of corporate branding to places out
into a wider understanding of interplaying societal, political, spatial and economic
structures that create what is known as place branding