City Branding and the Role of the City Websites in Building City Brands

Abstract

In today’s globalized world, the competition experienced intensively in many fields is being experienced amongst cities as well. Competition is taking place not only in the traditional environment, but in the online environment as well. In order to differentiate their cities from the rest and build an image and identity for themselves in this atmosphere of intensive competition, city administrators are taking advantage of the branding techniques used by private sector companies. At this point, the city websites have a key role for building and communicating the city brand. The aim of this chapter is to evaluate the role of the city websites in building city brands and promoting their brands. In order to fulfill the aim, the city branding, related concepts, and the role of the city websites in building city brands are introduced in the background section. Then, randomly selected city websites from the City Brands Index are evaluated using content analysis, and the results of this analysis are presented and discussed respectively.