Research on Work Mechanism of Image Resources of City for Brand

2012 Second International Conference on Business Computing and Global InformatizationResearch on Work Mechanism of Image Resources of City for Brand*Xu YingJilin UniversitySchool of Management Changchun, China xy@jlu.edu.cn

Yin JuanjuanJilin UniversitySchool of ManagementChangchun, China zzu.yinjuan@163.comAbstractThis paper is based on the close degree of the city image resources and the urban brand positioning. The city image resources are divided into the core image resources, the auxiliary resources and the derivative resources. By analyzing the way that each of the image resources acted on city branding, we explain how the urban image resources affect on the building of the city brand. Then we propose method to build the city brand with the help of the urban image resources.Keywords- urban image resources, city brand, city brand positioningI. STATE OF THE FIELD AT HOME AND ABROADA. State of the field at abroadThe city's image theory in the Western is early. However, the research based on the relationship between the resources factor and city branding dated from 1960, in which Kevin lynch defined the major factor of the city image in his book, "the Image of the City". He was the first person to propose the concept of the image of the city , and he emphasizes the significance of five elements of the cityimage[1].In 1981, from the point of view on the city's socialand cultural structure, human activity and space form with the environment, in his another book "A Good Urban Form Theory" , Professor lynch proposed that the key elements of urban design were how to ensure that the activities of the city intertwined from spatial arrangement, so as to realize allkinds of coexisting value of human being[2]. Form the 1980s to the early 1990s, PhilipKotler and others, who systematically put forward the "urban marketing" theory, considered that any country, city or town can be conducted"place marketing"[3]. To a certain extent, their viewsindicated that urban brand construction should be accomplished by the city's image resources. It can be seen that the research on urban image resources and urban brand was fairly mature in Western theorists. It had already been pointed out that the relationship between city branding and urban image resources. However, this study was not thorough enough.

B. State of the field in domesticProfessor Zhang Hongyan put forward the city's cultural capital theory in the research of the city brand image. He pointed out the importance of the cultural resources in the urban image resources, and indicated the city branding should create a city with the culture elite and cultural figuresgroup[4]. Sun Ray proposed an idea that named "urbanenvironment brand", which said that the urban environment construction had a great influence on enhancing city brand. His views described the importance of environmentalresources in the city brand building[5]. Xia Yuzeng and Xie Jian thought the city brand was the geographical formation of popularity and reputation of an industry in a region or a product, and they described the effect of industrial resourcesto shape the city brand[6]. In short, it set off a wave of citybranding research in China, due to the rapid economic development and further requirements of urbanization in the21st century. However, the theory was not yet mature without the systematic research.II. CITY IMAGE RESOURCES AND CITY BRANDA. ConnotationsCity image is the subjective feeling of the city's internal historical heritage and external features. In other words, it is the characteristic and style of the overall city that can be felt. The city image resources are the unique resources possessed by a city and they could bring certain benefits. Such as the city's history and tradition, the economic pillar, cultural heritage, leading industry, can bring some benefits for the development of urban economy. The city brand is the process that the city image resources elements be molded into the presentation can be felt and the apprehensive intension, on the based of the positioning of the city function. As far as we know, city brand is the form of the city specific assets and a distinctive mark distinguished with other cities. The urban image resources are the city's unique asset that is unique to distinguish it from other cities. That is to say, city branding is based on the resources of the city's image.*Basic scientific research expenses of project of Jilin University (2012QY031) ; Changchun soft science research project (09RY07)978-0-7695-4854-8/12 $26.00 2012 IEEE DOI 10.1109/BCGIN.2012.245

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B. Constitute elements of the city image resourcesConstitute elements of the city image resources are the core resources, the auxiliary resources and the derivative resources. This classification is mainly based on the correlation between city image resources and brand positioning. The core image resources refer to the resources that have most closely relationship with city branding, that are the basic resource for the city branding. The merits of the urban core image resources have a crucial role for the success of city branding. In general, the city's industries advantage, unique natural scenery, cultural heritage, landscape and so on can be the core of the city's image resources. Urban auxiliary image resources are those provided direct services for city branding except of the core image resources. Different from the core image resources, whether the auxiliary image resources are power or not, which is not directly related to the success of city branding. The derivative image resources of the city themselves are not part of the city branding, but greatly associated with the image resources for the city branding. Derivative image resources can be resources that the city itself present while indirectly serves the city's image branding, it can also be the resources that formed along with the process of the city branding, and served the city's image branding at the same time.C. The formation of elements of the city brandCity brand shows the most characteristic part of the city image resources, while it doesn't means that a city brand can be created just with image resources. The development of a city brand is not without foundation but has the rich history and reality. The elements of the formation of the city brand can be followed in number:1Industries advantage. If the city's industry has played a large market share both internally and externally, with strong radiation and competitiveness, it will form the city's advantages resources. To a large extent, it drives the development of other related industries and even drives the development of peri-urban areas. The advantage industries are the core image resources of the city branding. Thus, this city brand type can be called as the economic-oriented city branding. 2 Geographic resource. The unique advantages, owned by a city from the natural environment, can become the source of the city brand. The city branding that regarded natural resources as the dominant factor can be divided into two categories. One is called tourism-oriented city brand, which has a unique natural resource and its tourism is known to all. It makes tourism as a fundamental driving force of the city. The other is called transportation-oriented city brand, which would be domestic or international traffic center based on its advantages of location.3Cultural heritage. It contains two important aspects. The first is the city's history and culture. The second is the urban culture came from the accumulation. These two aspects cultural heritage are concrete manifestation of the city's intangible image resources. If a city's cultural resources are very rich, then its cultural heritage will be the basis of its branding and the invisible image resource has become the core image

resource of the historical and cultural city branding.4 Factors of production. The main production elements of the city brand contain natural resources, human resources, financial capital resources. The city branding directly affects the gather and towards of the urban cash flow, information flow, logistics and other resources. City's comprehensive strength will be more powerful since various factors of production is powerful, which shaped the comprehensive strength-based city brand.III. ANALYSIS ON THE ROLE OF THE CITY IMAGE RESOURCES ON THE CITY BRANDINGAs the classification of city image resources was based on its relationship with the city branding, roles of the intensity of different types of city image resources on the city branding are vary.A. The role of the core image resources on the city brandingThe core image resources are most closely related to the city branding, which are the leading resources for city branding. Therefore, it has a decisive role in the city branding. The more unique and valuable core image resources owned by the city, the greater of the likelihood of success of city branding. Second, the urban core image resources also determine the type of city branding. The city that wanted to create a distinctive urban brand must rely on its own core image resources. And with different types of the core image resources, cities will be able to shape the different types of urban brand. It is worth mentioning that, once the core image resources of the city are disappear, or lose the unique position, the city brand value will be lost. Therefore, the core image resources have a vital role on shaping the urban brand.B. The role of the auxiliary image resources on the city brandingThe auxiliary image resources do not have a very close relationship with the city branding, which is not directly related to the success of city branding whether it is powerful or not. Only when the auxiliary image resources of their own cities produced a higher correlation with the resources that urban branding needed, it services city brand. The auxiliary image resources provide services such as manpower, intelligence, information and so on, to urban branding. Such as the manpower that urban branding needed would be developed from school, and the information would be provided by urban communications equipment. The higher quality of the auxiliary image resources, the better services provided to the city brand, and the role will be greater on city branding.C. The role of the derivative image resources on the city brandingUrban derivatives image resources and city branding has a great relevance. It plays a promotional role in shaping the urban brand, which has a direct impact on the proliferation of urban branding effect. Derivative image resources may besomething the city itself present while indirectly serves the city's image branding. And it also may be things formed along with the process of the city branding, and served the city's image branding at the same time. Due to the derivatives image resources have a relatively large correlation with urban branding and derived from the process of urban branding, it has a good spread of the city branding process.

The roles of the city image resources on city branding process are shown as below:

IV. INTEGRATION OF THE URBAN IMAGE RESOURCES ,SHAPING THE CITY BRANDA. According to the urban core image resources conducted urban brand positioningBefore shaping the city brand, firstly it should be well known the type of the urban image resource and make it clear that what the core image resources of the city branding are. To improve urban brand positioning, the key is to grasp the four principles: the principle of practical feasibility, the principle of competition, the principles of combining traditional and times and public recognition principle.1 The principle of practical feasibility required that the city must position its brand with the resources from its own actual situation, which is not far-fetched and blind competition, but consistent with or close to the city reality.2The principle of competition is to highlight the city's personality. In the specific operation, it be selected the resources with the difference characteristics that both reflected the differentiation of the city's image, and can lead to higher reputation. 3 The principle of combining traditional and times is that it should reflect the traditional characteristics of a city, and make full use of cultural resources. The more quality of history that the city has, the more attractive it is. At the same time, it also has a sense of the times forward-looking in the city brand positioning process. Only when city brand embodies the spirit of the

times, it can be fresh with new vitality, demonstrating a new charm.4public recognition principle is means that the city brand positioning should be able to fully reflect the psychological needs and values within the city's public and external target audiences and will gradually won the public's recognition and support, through the perception of the city's various elements and contacting with the dissemination of information. City brand positioning should reflect public values, and reflect the public's social and psychological needs and the needs to improve quality of life, which could gain public recognition and support.On the foundation of clear city brand positioning, the city image resources can be integrated based on the principle of the city branding. First, the urban core image resources should be integrated. It can be excavated the existing core image resources as soon as possible. Highlight the core image resources, and enhance the efforts that the core image resources in the city branding with the help of other image resources. Second, if the city's core image resources are not obvious or it has no core image resources, a characteristic image resource can be highlight from many image resources through integrated, making use of media, government action activities and so on. Or, it may get help from neighboring cities' image resources, making relatively strong correlation with their own image resources and providing high quality services, to get the success of the city branding.B. Taking advantage of the auxiliary image resources, expanding the city's brand influenceThe city's auxiliary image resources directly serve the urban brand building, although not the main image resources of the city branding. On the one hand, urban auxiliary image resources can enhance the influence of core image resources, which enable to show the multiplier effect on the action of the core image resources. On the other hand, the strong of urban auxiliary image resources can promote the city brand even stronger, which provide better support and services for the city branding, expanding the influence of the urban brand. Therefore, it will be able to further expand the influence of the city's brand, through strengthening the construction of the city auxiliary image resources.Generally, auxiliary image resources possessed a strong production capacity. The higher vocational colleges that associated with the city branding provided intellectual support and manpower support for urban brand. The sound and comprehensive infrastructure provided a quick and easy and comfortable external environment for the city brand building. The good quality citizen and public events are essential power of the masses for a successful city brand construction. The government administration and the right policy support are an important guarantee for brand building. It can be seen that the auxiliary image resources are not born with naturally present. They can be formed or created in the follow of the objective law and the initiative. However the auxiliary image resource building activities and urbanbranding projects should complement each other when the image resources were formed or created. It should be avoid that auxiliary image resources are unrealistic or it has not much correlation with urban branding. So, it should be paid attention to the auxiliary image resources when the city brand was constructed and try to expand the correlation between the city auxiliary image resources and the city brand-building. The larger is the correlation, the greater that the auxiliary image resources can provide services for the city brand construction.C. With the help of urban derivative image resources, strengthen the dissemination of the city's brand imageWhether the city branding success or not largely depends on the city brand reputation both internally and externally. To improve the reputation degree of city brand, it should be spread the city brand image and make it enjoy popular support. The urban derivative image resources that derived from the core image resources, auxiliary image resources or the original derivative image resources, have a strong dissemination function by themselves. It has an important role in expanding the reputation of the city brand by using the city's derivative image resources to develop the dissemination of the city brand. Concerning the process of derivative image resources derived, which itself is the dissemination process of image resources. The more abundant is the derivative image resources, the more complex is the dissemination process, and the greater influence that the derivative image resources on the city brand is. At the same time, as the derivative image resources have a strong correlation with the urban brand, it also has a

strong influence on the city branding by strengthened their power. Therefore, on one hand, the main body of the city branding can improve the impact of the urban brand both domestic and international with the help of the strong urban derivative image resources. On the other hand, the derivative intensity of the derivative image resources can be strengthened to enhance the dissemination of the city's brand image and raise the impact of the city's brand. It is worth mentioning that, it should not abuse of city image resources or hold the subject activity without any characteristics and even vulgarization use the urban derivative image resources when expand and build urban derivative image resources, which would only lead to worse results, and have no sense for the city brand creation.In short, it is inseparable from the city's variousresources when creating a distinctive city brand successfully. The city's core image resources are the basis of branding the city. We should keep the development of the city's core image resources and created them constantly. The auxiliary image resources provide manpower support, intellectual, financial and other support for the city branding and it should expand the correlation of the auxiliary image resources and the city branding as much as possible. The derivative image resources are the primary means of expanding the influence of the city brand, strengthening the intensity of communication of the city brand effect, which needs to be made full use of and reasonable development.REFERENCES[1]Kevinlynch. The Image of the City. Lin Qingyi, Chen Chaohui translated. Beijing: Huaxia Press.2001:72 85[2]Kevinlynch .The Form of the City. Fang Yiping, He Xiaojun translated.Beijing: Huaxia Press.2001:2 83[3]PhilipKotler. Brand marketing, the soul of the city. [J]. New West 200510;23-25[4]Zhang Hongyan. City Image and Urban Culture Capital. [J].SoutheastUniversity Press. 2003.[5]Sun Ray. Construction of city brand. [J/OL]2006,7,16,[2008.6]http//homedonewscom/donews/article/9/99152[6] Xia Yuzeng, Xie Jian. Probe on Construction of regional brand --CaseStudy of Wenzhou. [J].China's industrial economy. 2003.(10); 43-48