Initiation, marketing and branding of smart city projects: a study of decision processes

ABSTRACT

Today, smart city areas and initiatives are found throughout the world, yet little research has been completed into the processes whereby decisions concerning the initiation, marketing, and branding of smart city projects have been taken. The present study examined these processes via interviews with 18 smart city managers, followed by an online World Café which was convened to discuss emerging issues. Interviewees were asked to relate stories of how decisions had been reached, which stakeholders had been prioritised, the extent of citizen co-creation in project initiation and branding, and the main difficulties involved. An argumentative narrative discourse methodology was employed to analyse the interview transcripts, which revealed a number of disparities between the suggestions of extant place branding literature and current practice where smart city projects were concerned.

KEYWORDS:

• Smart cities
• argumentative discourse analysis
• storytelling
• new project development
• World Café

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1. A smart home is a residence equipped with smart technologies that provide tailored services for users. Smart technologies monitor, control and support residents, allegedly enhance their quality of life and, for the elderly and/or disabled, promote independent living. Sensors integrated into home appliances via wireless systems make it possible to monitor and track residents as they watch TV, cook, sleep, clean, and complete other domestic activities. Users can remotely control household appliances, thus decreasing the burden of everyday household activities (see Marikyan et al., 2019).

2. Hajer (2002) defined discourse as a communication in speech or writing that contains ‘an ensemble of ideas, concepts, and categories’ through which meaning is assigned to entities or events (p. 63). Discourse analysis seeks to ‘describe the forms, practices, patterns, structures, and functions of everyday discourse, and also the procedures and mechanisms through which participants - - - lend and attribute order, coherence, and meaning to this discourse’ (Van Rees, 2007, p. 1455). Importantly, discourse analysis may be employed to examine how a discourse serves an interviewee’s standpoint on an issue.

3. https://www.cafonline.org/

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Rohini Vijaygopal

Rohini Vijaygopal is a Senior Lecturer in Marketing at the Open University UK, where she gained her PhD from the University’s Business School. Rohini’s research interests extend to social marketing, acculturation, branding and consumer behaviour. Rohini has been a faculty member in India as well as with various universities in the UK and teaches a variety of subjects in marketing and consumer behaviour. She writes for academic as well as business journals and for magazines/book/newspapers.

Roger Bennett

Roger Bennett is a Professor of Marketing at Kingston University. Roger’s current research interests involve the accessibility of really new technologies (driverless cars, pilotless aircraft, smart cities) to people with physical or intellectual impairments. He is the author of many books and a large number of journal articles on various aspects of marketing and business management. Among several other awards and distinctions, Roger is a recipient of the Academy of Marketing’s Lifetime Achievement Award.

Sharmila Savani

Sharmila Savani is a Senior Lecturer in Marketing at London Metropolitan University. Her present research interests relate to the marketing and branding of urban development projects and the rebranding of low-income districts; areas in which she has published several papers. Previously, Sharmila researched and published in the fields of nonprofit marketing and fundraising, creativity in nonprofit advertising, donor behaviour, and marketing orientation within nonprofit enterprises.