The Positioning Research Of City Cultural Brand

In recent years, researchers from different academic fields have set off a wave ofa comprehensive study of city marketing, while a lot of city administrators have paidstrong attention to it. Many cities have input largely in city marketing, but usually gotsmall output. Cities look like the same, so why does this phenomenon occur? Citymarketers don’t have a clear idea about how to get lasting competitiveness andattractiveness for the city. Cities are wild about the production of image promotionfilms and the establishment of landmarks, both of which result in the nearly zeroinvestment value, as well as contribute nothing to the brand equity. The core value ofurban brand results from the accumulation of urban cultural connotation, which canattract potential dwellers, investors and visitors, and bring unforgettable memory tothem. In a word, the city marketing and city branding are inseparable from theaccumulation and spread of urban culture.Based on the author’s study of foreign literature, it is found that there are fewresearches focusing on urban culture branding, and the existing researches are all lackof systematic view and deep thinking, since most of them have only described someconcepts which fail to guide the practice. Based on the related theory and empiricalresearch, five dimensions of urban culture will be proposed. City marketers canidentify the unique and competitive dimension among them to position the urbanbrand.Firstly, with reference to the domestic and foreign studies of urban culture, thispaper will propose the model of urban culture system, which has five sub-systems: artculture, contemporary culture, folk culture, religion culture and history culture. Then,this paper would propose the positioning model of urban culture brand depending onthe theoretical research related about brand positioning. For the system model ofurban culture, this paper would develop an urban culture scale to demonstrate itsreasonability through the confirmatory factor analysis and exploratory factor analysis.Then, these five cultural factors will be used as variables to do the clusteranalysis. From a cultural perspective, cities are divided into five types: the religiousatmosphere type, history continuity type, profound history type, dynamic fashion typeand folk customs type. Guangzhou belongs to the historical continuity type, and thispaper will explore the urban culture brand positioning of it.