Regional culture in the market-place: place-branding and product branding as cultural exchange

Abstract

In the modern consumer economy, the intangible or symbolic qualities of a product play a decisive role in its success or otherwise in the market place. Moreover, this applies to places as well as to physical products. This in turn poses a key research question—how can regions establish and maintain their distinctiveness in an ever more globalized and standardized world? Employing empirical data from the 6th framework project CURE, we observe three European regions (Györ, Styria and Wales) as taking different paths in response to comparable challenges that are economic but more specifically in relation to issues of branding and image. The rationale for this paper is then to investigate one of these regions in some detail—the case of Wales—in order to explore how the interaction between regional products and cultural manifestations of regional identity can play out in a specific European region (or nation in this case). We then speculate on the generalizability of these findings and suggest an agenda for further research.