Place Branding by Robert Govers & Frank Go

Author:Robert Govers & Frank Go
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
Published: 2008-12-31T16:00:00+00:00

CONCLUSION: THE PLACE BRAND PERFORMANCE GAP

In contrast to the consumption of goods that customers acquire for utilitarian benefits, the consumption of place is intangible and experiential in nature, involving emotions, feelings, drama and fantasies, and aims to satisfy primarily psychological benefits. Traditionally, researchers have viewed its labour-intensive character, the dependency on human interaction, and the involvement of a myriad of actors who participate in one way or another in the production, delivery and consumption of a total experience, as central issues. For example, consistency in service is often cited as being problematic, because any interruption in the delivery process will immediately affect service quality because of the simultaneous production and consumption.

Recently, therefore, the role of personalization in service encounters (Mittal and Lassar 1996) and the management of personalized experiences (Prahalad and Ramaswamy 2000, 2004a, 2004b, 2004c, 2004d) have received increased attention. Several guidelines are offered for service organizations to allow them to deal with service experience issues. First, places need to manage multiple channels or touch points of experience, such as vicarious experiences through popular culture and promotion/advertising, social space experiences as well as the actual travel experience itself. The key challenge here will be ‘to ensure that the nature and quality of the fulfillment, the personalized experience of the individual, is not different across the channels’ (Prahalad and Ramaswamy 2000, p. 84). Second, places need to manage variety and evolution in service delivery. Customers ‘judge a company’s products not by their features but by the degree to which a product or service gives them the experiences they want’ (Prahalad and Ramaswamy 2000, p. 85: emphasis added). Customization and knowledge about the place brand satisfaction and how it changes based on past experiences is therefore essential. Finally, shaping customers’ expectations and place image is of crucial importance. This ‘is not just about one-way communication by managers or advertising [of projected image]. It is about engaging current and potential customers in public debate’ (Prahalad and Ramaswamy 2000, p. 86).

A limitation of much of the present research is that it seems to perceive place marketing organizations and businesses as ‘command and control’-type organizations, where the focus has been on transaction cost theory, as opposed to the development of social interaction skills and trust. The latter are at the root of the emerging etiquettes of market forces and decision-making teams that are rapidly becoming the building blocks of the network economy. Organizational theory directed at the development of ‘command and control’-type governance should be viewed as a myth in a world where uncertainty seems the only certainty. Specifically, even when the public sector and local businesses possess the ‘right’ information about visitor expectations and the perceived place image in the mind of the visitor is realistic, the delivery of the place experience can still be disappointing, affecting service quality, if service personnel are not empowered to deliver a truly personalized yet consistent service that co-opts the customer. Not much is needed to affect customer satisfaction negatively whenever organizations fail to do this (see Bigné et al.

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