Identifying and Ranking the Effective Factors on City Brand Determination (Tehran)

This study obtains the probable information by analyzing data pertaining to the sample and finally attributes this information to the main universe. To gather theoretical basic principles related to the subject and to investigate research background, library method has been applied. This paper has used multi-stage cluster sampling method. With regard to the significance level of less than 0.05 for all factors, Chi-square test approved the significant relation of all factors by 95% confidence. Spearman correlation coefficient test revealed that correlation coefficients of this paper factors (environmental, economic, social cultural, historical, infrastructural, political) with Tehran branding are 0.429, 0.555, 0.431, 0.462, 0.611, 0.643, respectively. Friedman ranking test ranked factors effective on Tehran branding as environmental, historical, infrastructural, economic, political, social-cultural, respectively.


INTRODUCTION
Interest in the cities as a brand is growing as much as increase in the competition for lands.It is also a tool that transmits strengths of city with agility.So it is not surprising that most cities in developing countries and countries with mature economy seek to create a brand or to recover the existing brand.City branding is a place promotion method that has been developed recently and is different from city direct marketing.City brand is an emotional level of city image for promotion of intangible features like "spirit" and "value" of a city and also it is as a "feeling" or "state" of an experience of visiting a city and living there.A successful city brand associates a set of thoughts, feelings, associations and expectations when the name, logo, products, services, events, or any symbol of the city are somehow exposed.Thus determining an umbrella of the most important factors effective on such a brand is the first step.
Brand management for a city (country or tourist places) involves activities more than mere urban beautification designs.In fact, any entity that claims to fame must enjoy the essence of distinction and its managers must have the motivation of development.Although identity and personality of cities must be underpinned by what they have inherently, a proper relation is a vital matter that is created only by perseverance in underpinning an integrated management that monitors the elements engaged in the city fame.The question raised now is whether these effects exist or not; albeit by assuming their existence, this study goes ahead and surveys mechanism of the relation of identity with goods on one hand and culture on the other hand.Places have identity and personality.Consequently whatever that is converted into the identity in the mind is competitive and in this case (i.e., city identity) competition will occur for such matters as tourist attraction, reputation in hospitality, investor absorption, creating prosperity for its citizens, or for resources that produce competitive advantage.In this regard, experience of such countries as Germany (industrial products), Sweden (Volvo case), Finland (Nokia case), Turkey (textiles and food products), Japan (advanced technology products), France (beaux industries), Italy (style and fashion) and the United States (space technology) are among successful cases.

Theoretical principles:
• From city marketing to city branding: City marketing is a process that embraces a wide range of activities.It commences with a comprehensive analysis of the city current situation through extensive research regarding assets, opportunities, situations and visitors of the city and then places on the agenda the identification and selection of a particular attitude for the city and achievable goals with maximum cooperation and participation of the beneficiaries.The next step is projects planning with pre-determined goals and specified roles for participants.Then it applies and implements marketing criteria including functional, financial, organizational and advertising spaces.This process ends finally with constant supervision and evaluation of the results of all activities City marketing has been developed over time and during separate stages different in terms of refinement and transparency in the movement towards marketing.(Bailey, 1989) has offered a three-stage evolution: o The first generation known as "smokestack chasing" creates manufacturing jobs through companies' attraction o Second generation known as "target marketing" attracts manufacturing and service providing jobs in the target industries that enjoy growth o Third generation known as "product development" comprises the goals of two first stages and underscores "future jobs" as well Ward (1998) has similarly specified four main stages regarding the life cycle of urban and regional systems in terms of selling their place: o First stage uses agriculture in the wasteland.In this process, two separate activities are evident, sale of land and promotion of the first cities o Second stage is known as diversity of urban function in which distinction of most particular urban functions becomes evident in the evolving systems o Third stage relates to the industrial city sale which was more focused on the advertisements than selling the place or evaluation of the stimuli for industrialists' attraction o Fourth stage pertains to selling the place of elements having post-industrial city orientation.
Here, attempting to find sources of wealth to replace what has been lost, policy priorities turned towards city reconstruction and recovery Barke (1999) has considered two stages for city marketing: o First stage relates to the cities advertisement o Second stage starts city marketing by integrating known events and special developments in the built environment Hannigan (2003) In the late 1980s and early 1990s, crisis in cities of Europe and North America caused three problems, namely, de-industrialization, declining tax base and public expenses decrease; and these problems had serious effects on the cities.Not only factories were closed and job opportunities were eliminated one after another, but also mass industry culture which was prevalent from the end of World War II declined Ashworth and Voogd (1994) the results of these orientations were using and implementing city marketing in a more integrated and practical manner.The obtained experience was accompanied by developments in the field of marketing which finally led to the advent of social and non-profit marketing and provided some bases for a place marketing theory Implementation of marketing techniques in the places is derived from two separate orientations.
First orientation is theoretical and pertains to the development of new marketing methods particularly in nonprofit-noncommercial firms.In this orientation, development of a place marketing theory along with other marketing fields was taken into account.Second orientation was derived from method and practice of city managers and administrators who saw themselves on the brink of an urban crisis; and the public perceived such a crisis would lead to the potential decline of traditional urban economies as well as a subsequent obligation to an economic reconstruction and seeking new images for cities and new methods for their problems management (Club, 2011) • From place marketing to place branding: Since the beginning of 1990s, a serious endeavor commenced to create a place marketing approach.By development of theories in the marketing field, place marketing expanded and it has provided the stage for understanding marketing conclusions for urbanism and management (Ashworth and Voogd, 1990).City branding in the commercial world is related to the brand architecture idea and it investigates the relation between corporate brand and individual products/services brands or product lines • From companies to cities: There is a public consensus that cities cannot be easily regarded as a product.City brands have essential distinctions with product brands; however it does not mean that they cannot be introduced as corporate brands.In fact, there are many similarities between corporate branding and city marketing as specified by John et al. (2003).For example, corporate brands and city brands have multi dimensional roots (Ashworth and Voogd, 1990) both consider multiple stakeholder groups (Kotler et al., 1999), both have high level of complexity (Trueman et al., 2007) and must take social responsibility into account (Ave, 1994), both consider multiple identities (Dematteis, 1994) and need a long term development (Kavaratzis, 2004).It seems that corporate branding provides valuable suggestions for applying branding in cities and this is right about many interpreters who regard place phenomenon as a corporate brand (Trueman et al., 2007;Hankinson, 2007;Kavaratzis, 2004) Trueman et al. (2007)

RESEARCH METHODOLOGY
This study studies features existing among members of the statistical universe.Thus it applies descriptive-survey research method.Since this paper seeks to troubleshoot by data collection tools, it is a field-exploratory research.The present paper has been carried out in an actual and objective sample.Its results can be used practically; so it is a scientific-applied research.

Statistical universe, sample and sampling method:
Probable information has been obtained by analysis of data pertaining to the sample and this information has been finally attributed to the main universe.To gather and formulate theoretical basic principles regarding the subject matter and to investigate research background, library method has been applied through using books and papers existing in libraries and internet databases.First, experts and statistical universe were interviewed to determine indices required for writing questionnaire.The questionnaire includes three parts.First part embraces demographic traits.Second part includes questions aiming at identifying the most important old and new symbol of Tehran, attractions, personality, the most important historical and sport places and so on from Tehran residents' point of view.Third part focuses on identifying factors effective on determining Tehran According to the last census issued by Statistical Center of Iran, Tehran population has been reported 8.5 million in 2011 where people older than 15 constitute 77%.This percent equals to 6.545.000people.This study applied multi-stage cluster sampling method.In the other words, having determined sample volume, the questionnaires were distributed.Below formula estimated sample number 392.To increase confidence, 400 questionnaires were distributed: Questionnaire validity: To determine validity, the questionnaire was designed through library studies (foreign papers and case studies), consultation with experts of Tehran Municipality Research Organization and professors and advisors.Then it was delivered to some experts of the statistical universe and necessary changes were made.

Questionnaire reliability:
The questionnaire reliability was calculated by a pilot implementation.In so doing, 40 questionnaires were completed by the statistical universe as apre-testandthen reliability of the internal consistency was estimated by Cronbach's alpha.Cronbach's alpha coefficient means of pre-test variables were estimated 0.88 for social-cultural factor, 0.91 for infrastructural factor, 0.82 for economic factor, 0.85 for environmental factor, 0.71 for political factor and 0.77 for historical factor.Ultimately the final questionnaire was distributed and reliability was again calculated.So, one can state that the questionnaire enjoys proper reliability.

RESULTS
This study examines the relation between the dependent and independent variables.It has carried out calculations through SPSS software.
Descriptive statistics: Table 1 presents descriptive statistics pertaining to the statistical universe state and field studies carried out in this regard.
Chi-square test: Here, we use chi-square test to determine whether there is a significant relation in the research hypotheses.Table 2 presents the results.4.

Spearman correlation coefficient test: To investigate correlation coefficients between factors effective on the
According to the outputs of this test, effective factors on Tehran city brand are ranked as environmental, historical, infrastructural, economic, political, social-cultural, respectively.The results of this test may contribute to the planning and budget allocation to meet urban needs.

CONCLUSION
Some researches regarding city brand are carried out throughout the world to investigate strengths and weaknesses as well as opportunities and threats and finally present some suggestions for improvement of city image through data collection and establishment of focus group.Some others aim at determining a brand by using a product or service or any unique aspect of the city and also a logo or slogan to create or improve the city image.Furthermore, many studies have been carried out regarding cities particularly European cities consistent with conditions of each city and region.The subject of this paper stems from curiosity about determining Tehran city brand, consolidation, introduction and if necessary, improvement of the current image of this city.So we first aimed at determining the current image of the city by investigating all important factors.The difference of this paper with other papers is the investigation of all factors and sub-factors which leads to a comprehensive wide perspective from the current image of the city.Finally we provide below suggestions to the authorities and future researchers in this regard.

RECOMMENDATIONS
• We suggest the related organizations to make an attempt to reconstruct and maintain Tehran old historical symbols, sport places, museums and exhibitions, shrines, to beautify the surrounding areas and display them to the potential local and foreign visitors through holding artistic-cultural ceremonies.• It is suggested to put up statues of popular characters in the city and to carve their words of wisdom in the public places so as to link people with symbolic characters and introduce the city personality to the local and foreign visitors.• Tehran has attained the first rank among infrastructural indices.It is suggested to implement a comprehensive plan in 22 districts in line with beautification of buildings view and trimming the face of the city, modernization of urban decayed places, lighting and painting, recovering valuable cultural and historical buildings, improvement and renovation of parks and squares so as to increase beauty and create sense of belonging to the living place and sense of peace in the citizens.

Fig. 1 :
Fig. 1: Conceptual model Figure 1 depicts the research conceptual model.Factors of each group from the highest to the lowest are, respectively: • Environmental: House, traffic, air pollution, sound pollution, suburb, proper disposal of garbage and municipal waste • Economic: Living costs, skilled and unemployed labor force, multiple hotels, restaurants and coffee shops, goods and services distribution centers, being industrial, national and international commercial centers, exhibitions, multiple business opportunities, high wages, Tehran exhibitions attraction at the global level • Social-cultural: Immigration, news, reputation of universities, cultural diversity, unemployment, abundance of cinemas, power of the mass media, scientific reputation of the country, prevalence of addiction, fashion-oriented people, festivals and cultural events, multiplicity of social groups, easy friend-finding, abundance of research centers and libraries, sense of pride, apartment living culture, caring about the family, intellectual people, adherence to the traditions, alienation, proper social relation, religiousness, feeling security, observing driving rules, people mental health, local foods consumption, social justice, the retired accommodation • Historical: Reputation of the city shrines, abundance of historical buildings, global reputation of the city museums • Infrastructural: Heterogeneity of construction, proper bank services, multiplicity of shopping centers, proper urban services, urban decay, access to the day information, health care services, transportation, high quality city advertisement, multiple recreations, proper sport facilities, tourism attractions, parks, proper financial services (insurance), refueling station and gasoline and gas, attractive city landscape, modern architecture, sidewalks, streets, roads, highways, public parking lots, crisis management, drainage channels • Political: Global reputation, political symbolic places, symbol of freedom and expression

Table 1
With respect to the necessity of urban planning for effective factors on Tehran city branding, Tehran city branding factors have been ranked through Friedman test.The results are presented in Table