IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/pal/pbapdi/v17y2021i2d10.1057_s41254-020-00161-8.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Ningbo city branding and public diplomacy under the belt and road initiative in China

Author

Listed:
  • Shixin Ivy Zhang

    (University of Nottingham Ningbo China)

  • Yi Wang

    (University of Nottingham Ningbo China)

  • Nancy X. Liu

    (University of Nottingham Ningbo China)

  • Yat-Ming Loo

    (University of Nottingham Ningbo China)

Abstract

This paper takes Ningbo as a case study to examine stakeholders’ perceptions of the city image and city branding strategies under China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI). Using stakeholder approach and in-depth interviews with 53 city officials, residents, businesses, and expatriates in Ningbo, the authors argue that public diplomacy has influenced city branding strategies in the globalizing world. Different stakeholders have different perceptions toward city brand image based on their interests, focuses, and concerns. Expatriates are a crucial external stakeholder group in the city branding process. This study makes both theoretical and empirical contributions. Theoretically, the study contributes to enhance the link between public diplomacy and city branding concepts, thus further bridging the disciplines of international relations and marketing with the inclusion of the expatriates as significant stakeholders. It also provides interview-based empirical data to the studies of public diplomacy and city branding in the Chinese context.

Suggested Citation

  • Shixin Ivy Zhang & Yi Wang & Nancy X. Liu & Yat-Ming Loo, 2021. "Ningbo city branding and public diplomacy under the belt and road initiative in China," Place Branding and Public Diplomacy, Palgrave Macmillan, vol. 17(2), pages 127-139, June.
    • Handle: RePEc:pal:pbapdi:v:17:y:2021:i:2:d:10.1057_s41254-020-00161-8
    DOI: 10.1057/s41254-020-00161-8
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://link.springer.com/10.1057/s41254-020-00161-8
    File Function: Abstract
    Download Restriction: Access to the full text of the articles in this series is restricted.
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1057/s41254-020-00161-8?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Nye, Joseph S., 2008. "Public Diplomacy and Soft Power," Scholarly Articles 11738397, Harvard Kennedy School of Government.
    2. Mihalis Kavaratzis & G. J. Ashworth, 2005. "City Branding: An Effective Assertion Of Identity Or A Transitory Marketing Trick?," Tijdschrift voor Economische en Sociale Geografie, Royal Dutch Geographical Society KNAG, vol. 96(5), pages 506-514, December.
    3. Merrilees, Bill & Miller, Dale & Herington, Carmel, 2009. "Antecedents of residents' city brand attitudes," Journal of Business Research, Elsevier, vol. 62(3), pages 362-367, March.
    4. John P. Houghton & Andrew Stevens, 2011. "City Branding and Stakeholder Engagement," Palgrave Macmillan Books, in: Keith Dinnie (ed.), City Branding, chapter 0, pages 45-53, Palgrave Macmillan.
    5. Simon Anholt, 2007. "What is Competitive Identity?," Palgrave Macmillan Books, in: Competitive Identity, chapter 0, pages 1-23, Palgrave Macmillan.
    6. Claudia E Henninger & Caroline Foster & Panayiota J Alevizou & Chris Frohlich, 2016. "Stakeholder engagement in the city branding process," Place Branding and Public Diplomacy, Palgrave Macmillan, vol. 12(4), pages 285-298, November.
    7. Nicholas J. Cull, 2016. "A region speaks: Nordic public diplomacy in historical context," Place Branding and Public Diplomacy, Palgrave Macmillan, vol. 12(2), pages 152-159, August.
    8. Simon Anholt, 2007. "Competitive Identity," Palgrave Macmillan Books, Palgrave Macmillan, number 978-0-230-62772-7, December.
    9. Kaveh Peighambari & Setayesh Sattari & Tim Foster & Åsa Wallström, 2016. "Two tales of one city: Image versus identity," Place Branding and Public Diplomacy, Palgrave Macmillan, vol. 12(4), pages 314-328, November.
    10. Amelia Green & Debra Grace & Helen Perkins, 2016. "City branding research and practice: An integrative review," Journal of Brand Management, Palgrave Macmillan, vol. 23(3), pages 252-272, May.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Clara Pérez‐Cornejo & Pablo Rodríguez‐Gutiérrez & Esther de Quevedo‐Puente, 2023. "City reputation and the role of sustainability in cities," Sustainable Development, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 31(3), pages 1444-1455, June.
    2. Steven Chen & Eric Shih, 2019. "City branding through cinema: the case of postcolonial Hong Kong," Journal of Brand Management, Palgrave Macmillan, vol. 26(5), pages 505-521, September.
    3. Kasey Clawson Hudak, 2019. "Resident stories and digital storytelling for participatory place branding," Place Branding and Public Diplomacy, Palgrave Macmillan, vol. 15(2), pages 97-108, June.
    4. Beatriz Casais & Patrícia Monteiro, 2019. "Residents’ involvement in city brand co-creation and their perceptions of city brand identity: a case study in Porto," Place Branding and Public Diplomacy, Palgrave Macmillan, vol. 15(4), pages 229-237, December.
    5. Sining Kong & Huan Chen, 2018. "Wonderland in winter and little Europe in summer: a case study on how Harbin promotes its international image," Place Branding and Public Diplomacy, Palgrave Macmillan, vol. 14(4), pages 272-284, November.
    6. Laura Ripoll González & Fred Gale, 2020. "Place Branding as Participatory Governance? An Interdisciplinary Case Study of Tasmania, Australia," SAGE Open, , vol. 10(2), pages 21582440209, May.
    7. Yu-Min Joo & Bokyong Seo, 2018. "Transformative city branding for policy change: The case of Seoul’s participatory branding," Environment and Planning C, , vol. 36(2), pages 239-257, March.
    8. Steven Yamarik & Mariya Mileva, 2023. "Cultural institutes: Networks and determinants," The World Economy, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 46(4), pages 1119-1143, April.
    9. Richard Rutter & John Nadeau & Fiona Lettice & Ming Lim & Suwaid al Shamaisi, 2018. "Place branding of seaports in the Middle East," Place Branding and Public Diplomacy, Palgrave Macmillan, vol. 14(3), pages 197-212, August.
    10. Ewa Glińska & Oleg Gorbaniuk, 2016. "Restrictions on the use of the Aaker model in the measurement of city brand personality: The sender’s perspective," Place Branding and Public Diplomacy, Palgrave Macmillan, vol. 12(1), pages 46-58, February.
    11. Hun Shik Kim & Seow Ting Lee, 2021. "Peace talks: public diplomacy and place branding in the 2018 Trump–Kim summit in Singapore," Place Branding and Public Diplomacy, Palgrave Macmillan, vol. 17(2), pages 155-167, June.
    12. Kaveh Peighambari & Setayesh Sattari & Tim Foster & Åsa Wallström, 2016. "Two tales of one city: Image versus identity," Place Branding and Public Diplomacy, Palgrave Macmillan, vol. 12(4), pages 314-328, November.
    13. Juyan Zhang, 2020. "Compassion versus manipulation; narratives versus rational arguments: a PD radar to chart the terrain of public diplomacy," Place Branding and Public Diplomacy, Palgrave Macmillan, vol. 16(3), pages 195-211, September.
    14. repec:eur:ejserj:525 is not listed on IDEAS
    15. Strandberg, Carola & Styvén, Maria Ek & Hultman, Magnus, 2020. "Places in good graces: The role of emotional connections to a place on word-of-mouth," Journal of Business Research, Elsevier, vol. 119(C), pages 444-452.
    16. Elena Cruz Ruiz & Elena Ruiz Romero De la Cruz & Francisco J. Calderón Vázquez, 2019. "Sustainable Tourism and Residents’ Perception towards the Brand: The Case of Malaga (Spain)," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 11(1), pages 1-16, January.
    17. Merrilees, Bill & Miller, Dale & Herington, Carmel, 2013. "City branding: A facilitating framework for stressed satellite cities," Journal of Business Research, Elsevier, vol. 66(1), pages 37-44.
    18. Chung-Shing Chan, 2023. "From the perspective of local brand equity, how do citizens perceive green, creative and smart brand potential of future Hong Kong?," Place Branding and Public Diplomacy, Palgrave Macmillan, vol. 19(4), pages 500-513, December.
    19. Sadeque, Saalem & Roy, Sanjit Kumar & Swapan, Mohammad Shahidul Hasan & Chen, Cheng-Hao & Ashikuzzaman, Md, 2020. "An integrated model of city and neighborhood identities: A tale of two cities," Journal of Business Research, Elsevier, vol. 117(C), pages 780-790.
    20. Hanna Górska-Warsewicz, 2020. "Factors Determining City Brand Equity—A Systematic Literature Review," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 12(19), pages 1-35, September.
    21. Florida Clements, 2024. "Can numbers tell the story? An investigation on the impact of three place branding and marketing campaigns 2003–2019 on the attraction of new residents to the Isle of Man," Place Branding and Public Diplomacy, Palgrave Macmillan, vol. 20(3), pages 378-393, September.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:pal:pbapdi:v:17:y:2021:i:2:d:10.1057_s41254-020-00161-8. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Sonal Shukla or Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.palgrave.com .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.