Strategic Management of the Malaga Brand through Open Innovation: Tourists and Residents’ Perception

Elena Cruz-Ruiz,Elena Ruiz-Romero De La Cruz,Gorka Zamarreño-Aramendia,F.J Cristòfol

doi:10.3390/joitmc8010028

Elena Cruz-Ruiz, Elena Ruiz-Romero De La Cruz + Show 2 more

Open Access

https://doi.org/10.3390/joitmc8010028

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Abstract

Territory brands are vehicles for transmitting the attributes that identify a geographical setting, they facilitate market positioning and can contribute to generating an opinion that determines the promotion strategies of a place. The investment decisions of both private companies and institutional bodies will be strengthened if residents and tourists’ perception is known, seeking to reconcile the interests of visitors and citizens with the aim of collaborating in the creation of the city’s tourism planning under the principles of sustainability, open innovation and co-creation of value. The methodology used for this research focuses on an empirical study, for which a sample of 780 individuals was designed so that the Malaga brand was subjected to analysis with criteria of innovative opportunity, applying constructs that were measured with existing and proven scales. The results allow us to identify that the Malaga brand is being built and managed on the basis of the cultural projection of the city and its image attributes. The ratings of tourists and residents will serve as a basis for improving the management of Malaga as a tourist destination by the institutions involved, taking into account the interest of open innovation. The conclusions of the research can be extrapolated to other geographical environments with similar levels of tourism development.

Highlights

The city is a melting pot that brings together the cosmopolitan and the provincial [1].It is a place where cultural institutions and businesses that serve the leisure of the local population and the tourist [2] are based, functioning as global and undifferentiated hubs [3]
There are different strategies implemented for the city brand, and on numerous occasions the role of culture is presented as an innovative need to connect with the experience that tourists want to live on their trips [84], a culture that is present in the new image that is projected in the study of the Malaga brand
The urban space as a cultural project was established in Malaga in the last decade [85], which allows in different cases the future of tourist cities to be redesigned [86] in a kind of improvement thanks to planning strategies that go through a process of open innovation in order to improve the tourist projection of Malaga through a better knowledge or even redesign of its promotional brand

Summary

Introduction

The city is a melting pot that brings together the cosmopolitan and the provincial [1].It is a place where cultural institutions and businesses that serve the leisure of the local population and the tourist [2] are based, functioning as global and undifferentiated hubs [3]. It is said that a city that aspires to its success as a destination must take into account all parts involved, such as residents, tourists and businesses [5], making cities more sustainable in the long term [6,7] In this dynamic, traditional styles of sociability and consumption give way to the push for integration, which is gradually imposing itself on the leisure practices of the residents themselves, generating spaces of hybridisation [8] and a new perception of city identity, which has a direct impact on the city as a brand [9]. The self-image of the destination as perceived by its residents has a significant effect on tourist arrivals [12,13]

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