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This article presents a case study on the influence of energy and ecological transition on a city's brand perception. Focusing on As Pontes, Spain, the study reveals how this socio-economic paradigm shift generates uncertainty, undesired expectations, and a negative self-image of the city. The objective is to reposition the city brand in alignment with the new paradigm. A literature review and Delphi technique were employed to validate the paradigm shift and anticipate its consequences. Analysis of a survey using Structural Equation Modeling (SEM) shows a lack of awareness and high uncertainty among the local population. Another Delphi panel suggests cities to emulate and attributes for the city's brand repositioning. Repositioning aims to adapt to the new sustainability model, enhance competitiveness, and restore pride and belonging within the global context of cities. This study underscores the importance of understanding the challenges and opportunities during the energy and ecological transition for a city's identity and governance, providing guidance for effective brand repositioning strategies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

New ways of promoting sustainable urban development are currently being sought. One of them is the slow city model, which has been implemented by some municipalities. This model forms the basis for cooperation between the cities within the international Cittaslow network. It has been assumed that the Cittaslow brand could generate numerous benefits for cities. It can be a significant regional growth and socio-economic development factor. However, city dwellers have to be familiar with the brand, and they have to understand the philosophy behind the Cittaslow movement. The aim of the present study is to assess the awareness of the Cittaslow brand among the residents of the cities that are members of the Cittaslow network. Data from the questionnaires have been classified into multiway tables. The chi-square test is used to examine the relationship between the attributes. The surveys conducted demonstrate that the residents are not sufficiently familiar with the Cittaslow brand to derive any potential benefits from their network membership. This observation suggests that city dwellers should be educated on the main tenets of the slow city concept. The present study demonstrates that urban residents' awareness of the Cittaslow brand, the slow city philosophy and the Cittaslow logo is influenced by their gender and age. These results show not only the need for education but also the need to promote the desirable forms of urban development; the respondents were familiar with some activities pertaining to the slow city concept, but they were not familiar with the other activities and did not link them to the Cittaslow movement. The most desirable ways of promoting the territorial Cittaslow brand were also identified. There is a general scarcity of research on the Cittaslow brand in Poland and in the world, and thus further studies are needed to formulate meaningful conclusions with the aim of promoting the development of the Cittaslow network. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study used Staggered DID on the panel data of 254 prefecture-level cities in China from 2005 to 2016 to explore the promotion effect and mechanism of innovative city pilot policy on urban brand development. The research shows that compared with cities without the pilot policy, the construction of innovative cities can increase the city brand value by 10% and has significantly promoted eastern, non-central cities with large populations and higher levels of science and education. Innovative city pilot policy can promote city brand development through cultural inheritance and innovation and entrepreneurship mechanisms. The results indicate that innovative city pilot policy has a significant spatial spillover effect on city brand development. Our findings add to the field of city brand evaluation by providing policy suggestions and experiential references for evaluating city brand development. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

City brand strategies play an important part in building strong identities for cities and also for effective promotional campaigns. The purpose of this research is to analyze in more depth the dimensions of the City Brand Personality of Ias, i, as identified in previous research. The objectives of the present study are to: (1) understand the impact of each dimension upon the entire construct; (2) identify the possible connections between the perception of the city brand personality and the perceptions on particular city features; (3) identify the possible inter-connections between the resulting dimensions. An Independent Samples t test, Discriminant analysis, and Correlations and Regressions analysis were conducted. The dimension Peacefulness/Sincerity has the highest positive impact, while the dimension Malignacy has the lowest negative impact. Respondents who consider the city to be relatively young rate the personality features better for the dimensions of Peacefulness/Sincerity and Competence. Competence and Peacefulness/Sincerity are strongly related. Improving the perception of features composing the Competence dimension leads to an improvement of the entire City Brand Personality. Future research could specifically identify the types of sustainable activities that could be associated with the desired personality traits. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper aims to reach insights into city branding in the Covid-19 context to discuss the projected brand propositions and their reliance oan sustainable brand attributes and values. This study explores the immediate response of overtouristified cities to the post-pandemic crisis by focusing on four iconic cultural cities in Italy, which are Florence, Milan, Rome, and Venice, and the related Facebook communication in summer 2020, right after the end of the lockdown following the first wave of contagion in the country. A content analysis of the official Facebook accounts of these cities provided an explorative insight into different destination brand approaches to dealing with the pandemic threat, revealed fading urban characters of the tourism experience and an expansion of the destinations from a spatial perspective, towards city-region destinations. The findings suggest potential configurations of the sustainable destination brand whose formation, in the case of the overtouristified cities, deserves further attention throughout the evolution of the Covid-19 crisis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Taking Chengdu as an example, based on the destination image theory and employing the content analysis methodology, this paper conducts data mining on the online comment texts of TikTok short food videos, and analyzes the impact of short food videos on the destination image (cognitive image, affective image and conative image). The results show that: (1) in terms of cognitive image, short food videos have increased potential tourists' attention to the destination image, especially their attention to the flavor characteristics of food in the destination and the local social environment; (2) in terms of affective image, the comments of short food videos are mainly neutral and positive, and the contents about the flavor characteristics of food and the local social environment are more likely to affect the affective image of the destination; and (3) in terms of conative image, the appearance description of food in short food videos brings about an obvious effect of intention, and it also creates the demand to travel together and obtain information. This paper is inspiring for city managers and tourism marketers to use TikTok short videos to establish and disseminate food-based city brands and destination images. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]