Abstract
Purpose - Competition among cities around the world are rapidly shifting from competition of production factors such as labor costs and quality of raw materials to competition between the consumption factors such as quality of life, settlement environment, culture, and place. The entry into the era of competition between consumption factors is not only attracting investment for strengthening city competitiveness, but also actively inducing urban image reconstruction and new image making. Therefore, various studies related to urban marketing are being carried out. The object of this study is to investigate the effect of city brand image on city brand recognition and city loyalty based on the questionnaire of external citizens about Changwon city. Research design, data, and methodology - The data were collected from 200 Seoul and Busan citizens. Reliability and exploratory factor analysis were conducted through the SPSS program, and confirmatory factor analysis and structural equation modeling were conducted by using the AMOS program. Results - As a result of the hypothesis test, six hypotheses were adopted among the nine hypotheses. In summary, pleasant image, dynamic image, and good administrative image have a significant positive impact on city brand recognition. The magnanimous image did not have a significant effect on city brand recognition. In the impact of city brand image on city loyalty, magnanimous image and good administrative image had significant positive impact on city loyalty. Pleasant images and dynamic images did not significantly affect city loyalty. In addition, city brand recognition positively influenced city loyalty. Conclusions - First, it is possible to say that there is an academic significance of this research in its contribution to regional revitalization by investigating mutual influences in urban aspect by combining place marketing with image, recognition, and loyalty. Secondly, kinetic images such as pleasant image and dynamic image have more influence on recognition, and static images such as magnanimous images have more influence on loyalty. So, further research will be necessary to establish theories. Finally, In order to increase city brand recognition and city loyalty to local city, efforts should be made to improve urban images such as pleasant image, magnanimous image, dynamic image, and good administrative image.