Local Government’s Functions In The Development Of Regional Branding

A regional brand is the product of regional economic development, and is also an important embodiment of a region’s competitiveness. The construction of a regional brand is an economic-development-driving strategy taken in a certain area, which regards the local government as a leading role, enterprises as market entities, intermediary agencies as assistance, and industry clusters as the carrier of famous regional brands. In this strategy, the local government played a crucial and irreplaceable role, which is due to the regional brand’s public product attributes and the local government’s economy management function. Besides, the transformation and upgrading of regional economy in China also need the local government to play an important role in the development of local brand.Zhejiang Province is the representative region of the regional brand construction. Zhejiang’s good development of its regional brands benefits from the promotions of local governments at all levels. There are two case studies in this article. For one is the case study of Jingshan Tea in Yuhang District of Hangzhou City. The local government supported and guided this traditional regional brand to restore and revive and even enjoy a great-leap-forward development. For another is the case study of regional brand of Cixi home appliance industry. Facing the market-formed regional brand based on a modern industry cluster, the local government strongly supported promoted the development of this industrial cluster through various policy measures, making an important contribution to the construction of regional brand.Two representative cases revealed the local governments’function fields and action mechanism in the regional brand construction process. For the first, the local governments should position itself correctly among various stakeholders in different stages of the brand construction. Secondly, the government’s four big function fields mainly embodied in the strategic guidance, public products supply, allocation of resources, and market supervision, and thus lead to many kinds of measures, like the strategic planning, brand register policy guidance, public service, market supervision, integrated marketing and so on. Finally, the local government must establish and improve corresponding mechanism, like the working mechanism, the brand incentive mechanism, overall process service mechanism, multi-body cultivation mechanism, brand protection mechanism, to guarantee that the role of government can play smoothly...