City marketing research: a bibliometric analysis

Abstract

City marketing (CM) refers to the practice of promoting and selling cities, towns or regions to a specific target market. In recent years, the academic, political, and managerial interest in CM has grown steadily, becoming one of the fastest growing fields within the marketing and study of tourism. From this perspective, the aim of this research is to analyze the body of literature developed around CM, in order to construct indicators for scientific production. Specifically, the study made use of the bibliometrics and the database Web of Science, utilizing the terms city marketing and city branding as search terms in a non-exclusive manner. It also identifies the evolution of the scientific production, the main academic journals, the most prolific and highly cited authors, the areas of knowledge involved in the CM field, and the concepts or topics that have been most intensively studied. The results suggest that CM studies have increased since 2015, as the scientific journals that publish most research in the field have improved their Scimago Journal and Country Rank (SJR) classification; in addition, it was possible to establish that most of these articles belong to English-speaking and European countries.

Keywords

• city -- tourism
• tourist trade
• marketing
• journal articles