Evaluation of the competitiveness capacities of Songhor City with emphasis on city branding and creation of investment opportunities

Competitiveness and branding are relatively new research approaches in the urban and regional planning literature. The purpose of this research is to identify the competitiveness and branding Capabilities of Songhor city as a destination with competitive capabilities. This is analytical-applied research. In the first stage, by distributing a questionnaire among the citizens of Songhor with a sample size of 382 people, the competitive capacities of this destination were examined. The reliability of the questionnaire was confirmed with Cronbach's alpha coefficient above 0.7 for the entire questionnaire and for all indicators. Then, using "confirmatory factor analysis" and "amos" software, it was determined that the "economic dimension" has the highest correlation with the competitiveness index of Songhor city. Also, at the level of indicators, "culture and identity", "agriculture", "transportation" and "ecotourism and natural attractions" have had the highest correlation with the dimensions of "social culture", "economic", "environmental physical" and "infrastructure" respectively. In the next step, after presenting the results to the expert community, 7 options were determined for the city, which was categorized in three dimensions: "cultural", "economic" and "tourism". Then these options were categorized again in the form of a paired comparison questionnaire for prioritizing the options using the "ANP" method and distributed among 20 experts. The results of this stage showed that the "economic" criterion is considered the most important one for Songhor city branding. Also, the option of "Sunflowers City" is considered the "main brand" of this city with regard to its "economic" dimension.