Economic Coopetition and the Absence of Comprehensive Data: Why Scholars and Practitioners Should Work Hand in Hand

Policies designed to attract and retain residents, tourists, and companies form one of the ultimate goals of place branding. These policies are of vital importance for public sector organizations because of their added value to the economy and quality of life of a given area. Consequently, a careful assessment is needed to better understand the issues at stake and how the attractiveness potential can be raised. Creating the conditions for such an assessment requires accurate data collection and analysis. Regarding residents and tourists, data usually abound, increasing the feasibility of impact assessment studies. However, detailed statistics about companies are often missing, especially in a context characterized by a strong dynamic of coopetition. Here, we investigate the case of Switzerland, where the federal entities are in competition with each other but at the same time join their forces under the umbrella of supra-regional organizations. The absence of precise and systematic information about the establishment of new private firms in the federated states, which is reported in this chapter, has implications for research and practice. It is symptomatic of a broader issue: the lack of access to data regarding attractiveness. On the one hand, scholars cannot fully exploit the fragmented available data and can only provide scattered evidence about attractiveness policies. On the other hand, this opacity problem may lead to the global absence of trends, long-term evolutions, and the identification of best practices in the field. This chapter calls for collaborative projects between researchers and practitioners to develop tools to better assess the impact of places’ attractiveness policies.