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Cities provide social and technical infrastrucutre like social, cultural, industrial and
educational facilities, commercial activities, houses for dwellers and leisure amenities
(Stewart, 1996). That is why, cities can be regarded as a ‘product’ from this perspective and
branding strategies can be applied like the other products and services (Keller, 1999; Morgan
et al., 2002; Hankinson, 2004; and Anholt, 2005). Cities compete with each other to attract
new tourists, visitors and investments (Ashworth and Voogd, 1990; Kanter, 1995; and
Warnaby, 1998).
The politics of urban development and interurban competition have been the
focus of urban studies in recent decades (Logan and Molotch, 1987; Cox and Mair,
1988; Peck, 1995; Peck and Tickell, 1995; Lauria, 1997; Hall and Hubbard, 1998;
Cochrane, 1999; Cochrane et al., 1996; Cox, 1999; and Jonas and Wilson, 1999a).
Particularly, since the 1980s, the competition has increased between cities and they
have felt a need to differentiate themselves from each other to assert their
individuality. Depending on the increasing interurban competition, city marketing,
urban branding and urban regeneration and image making have become the key
factors for urban governance.
Today, it is a fact that what is projected as the image of a city can be more
important than the reality of the city itself in shaping the visitors, investors and its
own inhabitants’ opinion of it. Marketing techniques are often used to help a city’s
transformation into a center of tourism, culture and redevelopment. In addition,
urban tourism plays an increasingly important role in deciding the economic
development strategies by the local authorities. In this matter, the city marketing
plays a decisive role (Deffner and Liouris, 2005).
City marketing is defined as the practice of selling places, and entails public
and private agencies who strive to ‘sell’ the image of a particular geographicallydefined
‘place’, usually a town or city, so as to make it attractive to economic
enterprises, to tourists and even to inhabitants of that place (Kearns and Philo,
1993). City marketing aims at a series of different objectives such as raising the
competitive position of the city, attracting inward investment, improving its image
and establishing city identity (Inn, 2004). Urban images are constructed both
through discourse—as in marketing campaigns, promotional brochures and tourist
advertising and by more concrete means, including the transformation of the built
environment through public works, historical preservation and redevelopment
programs (Broudehoux, 2001).
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