Methodology of Valuation of Cities’ Brands

A growing number of articles and literature in Croatia and worldwide deals with the issue of applying marketingand branding concepts to cities and countries or places in a wider sense (a city denoting an urbanized, organized and functionally shaped place with all belonging contents and functions). From the perspective of physical planning and urban development, literature is focused on macro perspective of a place, on efficient social and economic functioning of an area inconformity with objectives set by a particular social and political community. From the perspective of marketing and branding theory, literature is more focused on marketing and branding nations and less on the segment of cities and small towns. This particularly refers to Croatian and foreign literature and scientific works in terms of modelling the methodologyfor the valuation of city brand. There are but a few concrete researches in this particular field, and hence this paper examines and researches reasons for branding cities and tries to set the theoretical framework for measuring – valuating the city brand. Financially, it is very important to be able to assess the extent to which marketing, budget and economic efforts invested in the creation of the brand have contributed to the newly created value of the city.1