Learning to co-create the city brand experience

Abstract

Given the peculiar characteristics of cities, which in many ways render them unamenable to manipulation following the product-concept philosophy, an alternative approach to conceptualising city brands is required. Focus must shift to understanding city brands in terms of how they are experienced and how local authorities can take a leading role in designing and assisting users to co-create valuable city brand experiences. Leading contributions from the theory and practice of the experience economy, service dominant (S-D) logic and consumer brand experiences provide the basis for public and private organisations to devise innovative ways to co-create city brand experiences with city brand users.