Determine the effective components in urban branding(Case study: Pareh Sar city)

In today's developed world, cities act as competitors and strive to capture more capital market share, outstanding talent, and global attention. Urban branding is a tool for gaining a competitive advantage, increasing domestic investment, and tourism. In urban branding, it is always tried to create a distinctive and unique image in the minds of the audience by creating and combining the emotional and functional characteristics of that city. Therefore, the purpose of this study is to determine the effective components in urban branding for the city of Parehsar in Guilan province. Methodologically the research design is an exploratory mix in two stages; In the first stage, was used the Foundation's data qualitative research method, and in the second stage, the descriptive-survey quantitative method and structural equations were used. Initially, semi-structured and exploratory interviews were conducted with 15 academic and executive elites who were purposefully selected based on the theoretical saturation index and were fully acquainted with the citiy. Analysis of qualitative data by foundation data method and analysis of data obtained from the questionnaire by confirmatory and exploratory factor analysis. The statistical population of the quantitative stage of this research included people or individuals who visited two cities and the number of statistical samples was 384 people for each city separately, with using Cochran's formula. Structural equation modeling using SmartPLS and SPSS21 software was used to analyze the data and test the research hypotheses.