An analysis of the status of urban brand components in Maragheh city

Urban branding is a valuable tool for cities to effectively manage domestic and foreign opportunities and turn them into competitive advantages. In an increasingly globalized world, cities are increasingly competing to attract businessmen, investors and new citizens to their area, many of these areas use branding techniques to distinguish their identity from others. Or this method is used to have a unique offering. Urban brand is the city's stable reputation and nature, showing its special value and has a competitive advantage. Cities and countries need to take advantage of this process to survive in today's competitive world and stability of their competitive advantage. Urban branding is a new topic in the field of urban studies and the history of branding is about two or three decades ago. The present study seeks to identify the potentials and constraints that this city faces in utilizing its urban branding capabilities and to identify priorities for planning and orientation of urban branding. To this end, the research hypotheses are that: Maragheh is in a desirable position in terms of (economic, social, cultural and environmental) urban brand. And the second hypothesis is that there seems to be a significant difference between the components of the urban brand in Maragheh. Evaluating these hypotheses will determine not only the status of each component for urban branding, but also the components that are most strongly correlated with urban branding. Now, given the importance of this issue, one of the most important means of distinguishing and recognizing the city's reputation is to create urban branding. One of its most important goals is to capture factors contributing to economic growth such as purchasing power, investment, product capability and city-wide innovation. The results of the one-sample t-test for the first hypothesis show that the average social component in Maragheh is 2.718, which is smaller than the baseline (3.00), indicating an undesirable status of the components. Is a social brand; Also, the P-value obtained (1.00) is greater than the alpha at the significance level of 0.5 With 0.95 confidence, it can be concluded that the social component of the urban brand in Maragheh is not favorable. One of the main reasons for the poor status of the social component is the low level of cooperation of urban managers with the private sector, low participation of people in the implementation of urban plans, high poverty in some neighborhoods, etc. The calculated average for the economic component is 2.931 which is smaller than the base number (3.00). The P-value (0.998) was also greater than the alpha at the significant level of 0.7. It can be concluded with 0.95 confidence that the economic component of the urban brand in Maragheh is not favorable. One of the main reasons for the low economic component is the low level of domestic and foreign investment in the city, the low quality and quantity of business centers and Concerning cultural components, since the median value 3 is within the confidence interval (2.989–3.161 / 161), with respect to the P value (0.44) that is smaller than the alpha at the level of 0.7. As a result, the successor assumption is accepted. then, that the cultural components of the brand in Maragheh are in good standing. One of the main reasons for the desirability of the cultural component is the city's historical presence, the presence of 300 recorded monuments, and . The average environmental component of the brand is 3.505, which indicates a higher value than the baseline (3.000) and the condition is favorable and Null hypothesis is rejected. The obtained p-value (0.00) is also smaller than the alpha at the level of 0.5, thus the successor assumption is accepted. Therefore, it is concluded that the environmental component of the brand in Maragheh is in good condition. The main reasons for the high environmental footprint are: favorable climate and pollution, being a paleontological indicator of the world's fossil paradise, having many springs, being a city garden. The test results for the second hypothesis show that the p-value obtained is (0.000) which is lower than the alpha level of 0.05 which means that there is a significant difference between the brand components in Maragheh. Next, Tukey's test is used to examine the details of this difference. Which shows that the socio-economic components do not differ significantly. Environmental component and cultural component There is a significant difference between them and other components. he results of linear regression showed that social component has the highest affinity to urban brand and economic component is in the second place of correlation and cultural component is in the third stage and the environmental component is in the lowest position. This research is done based on descriptive-analytic and documentary-library studies, as well as field studies (questionnaire and interview), and the type of this research is applied. In this regard, for each of the studied components, the indicators and descriptors were designed and attended by experts in Delphi Method in the form of multi-stage questionnaires. The provided questionnaires were given to the statistical community by a panel consisting of 15 experts from Maragheh city in different specialties. The obtained data were analyzed by Mini-Tab software. Validity of the questionnaires was confirmed by the professors. Cronbach's alpha method was used to reliability evaluation of measure instrument, which indicates the data is reliable (0.93). One sample t-test was used to investigate the first hypothesis of research and to identify the status of the components of urban brand. One-way ANOVA and Tukey's test were used to examine the significance of differences between components of urban brand. Then, using linear regression, correlation between components and brand was obtained.