Aliakbar Salaripour; Mitra Roshan; Alieh Faridi Foshtomi; Hamid Reza Yoosefi Matak
Abstract
Extended AbstractBackground and Objectives: Creative urban development not only contributes to social improvement, but also fosters economic development and citizen welfare. Urban branding ...
Read More
Extended AbstractBackground and Objectives: Creative urban development not only contributes to social improvement, but also fosters economic development and citizen welfare. Urban branding is a tool to promote cultural and social values, catalyze economic development, and facilitate competition among cities for investment, tourism, and global events. In this increasingly competitive environment, urban branding helps to attract visitors, capital, and residents, various economic benefits, social cohesion, and added value to cities as a whole. By emphasizing a city’s identity and local culture, branding ultimately improves the quality of life for its inhabitants. The Internet and communication technologies has ushered in a new era in the global economy, with media serving as an effective tool for marketing and advertising, significantly elevating a destination’s reputation and brand. Nowadays, the media’s critical task is to create ideas and mental images of facts. Tourism and its brand heavily rely on the relationships between stakeholders, and establishing, maintaining, and developing relationships is the key to success.Gilan province, with many gastronomic capacities, successfully designated Rasht as its Gastronomy Creative City in 2015. While Rasht has held this title as Iran’s sole gastronomy creative city for the past five years, the city image as the center of the country’s gastronomic culture has remained under-promoted both nationally and internationally. This article seeks to evaluate the capacity of various media channels, encompassing both mass and social media, in the context of city branding. Urban management institutions have the opportunity to leverage these media platforms to introduce and promote the brand of Rasht as a creative gastronomic city, thereby accelerating the city’s economic development. This research aims to evaluate and analyze how effectively the creative city of Rasht has used media capacity at the national and international levels to raise awareness about itself and introduce the creative city of Rasht.Methods: This study uses a descriptive approach to address research questions and is applied in terms of its objectives. Data was collected through surveys and document analysis. A questionnaire using a five-point Likert scale was employed to measure the media’s capacity to promote Rasht as a creative gastronomy city. The questionnaire comprises four sections (criteria): branding, social media, mass media, and media information quality (formation of destination image). The research population encompasses all residents, citizens of Rasht, and tourists who have visited the city at least once. A total of 395 online questionnaires were distributed and completed among Rasht’s residents, citizens, and tourists. The online questionnaire featured conditional questions to segment respondents based on their residence or travel status. SPSS software was used for quantitative analysis, and to verify the questionnaire’s reliability and internal validity, Cronbach’s alpha value was calculated, yielding a score of 0.914. Subsequently, Smart PLS3 software was employed to model and analyze the findings. Findings: The Friedman test was used, to rank and identify the essential criteria.. A significance level below 0.05 in the Friedman test affirms its validity and confirms the ranking of criteria impacting branding. Results reveal that the branding criterion, with an average score of 3.45, claims the top position, followed by media information quality, social media, and mass media with average scores of 2.62, 2.30, and 1.63, respectively. Then, using Smart PLS3 software, the findings were modeled and analyzed. The results highlight that “social media,” with a path coefficient of 0.361, emerges as the most influential factor in branding Rasht as a creative city. Within the social media sector, “endorsement by celebrities and social media influencers” brings in a factor of 0.784, signifying its substantial impact on Rasht’s branding. While the impact of mass media on branding Rasht is less promoted, it is essential to recognize that this criterion still holds potential for branding and promoting the city, provided that effective strategies and activities are implemented. Conclusion: City branding can only be achieved through the proper use of media and effective advertising. This study distinguishes between social and mass media. Broadcasting is the most important visual and audio mass media, but now social media has a more prominent role and capacity than traditional mass media in city branding. According to citizens and tourists, endorsements by celebrities play a pivotal role in shaping Rasht’s image on social media platforms. In today’s era, also known as the digital age, Internet communications play a significant role in people’s lives, so special attention to the Internet, advertising, and urban management investments in various social media can be a practical step in branding the Rasht city.
