Driving Enterprises To Participate In Place Branding: Competitive Strategies That Engender Legitimacy And Efficiency

Under globalization of world economy, place branding has become strategic resource of regional economic, and is competitive edge and base of long-term profits. The performance of place branding depends on the participation wish and the behavior of participation on place branding. Its internal motivations comes from the pressure of mitation, mandatory and standardized institutional to rational choice for resources.Firms doing business face pressures to gain social acceptance(commonly referred to as legitimacy) and difficulty in evaluating market information, both of which undercut firm performance. In this article, we argue that firms can design competitive strategies to deal with institutions to secure both social acceptance and firm performance. Using samples of some typical enterprises that participate in place branding, the authors develop and test a model that bridges the effects of institutional environments and competitive strategy on firm performance. Specifically, they find that firms can use two competitive strategies, cost leading strategy and differentiation strategy, to deal with both legitimacy and efficiency issues and to safeguard firm performance. Thus, leaders are advised to maintain an integrated management of legitimacy and efficiency in participate in place branding.