City Brand: what are the main conditions for better performance?

Abstract

Territories and respective political agents recognize now the importance of being attractive, not only because of tourism, but also because this is an important feature to attract investment and even new residents. Based on this evolution, the concept of territory branding has been developed, with rankings like the Portugal City Brand measuring it. With the objective of explaining the most important conditions for territories to attain higher city branding and based on a large dataset, a factor analysis was applied to identify possible components to be used. With those components and using a fuzzy-set qualitative comparative analysis, the main conditions for a better position in the ranking are identified. Results point to better identification of conditions to distinguish lower positioned municipalities, namely lack of economic conditions, of general conditions and low demographic indicators. Moreover, it is possible to conclude that the conditions of the different sub-rankings are different from the ones of the main ranking.