Stakeholders play a significant role in developing brand identity (Førde 2016; Wallpach et al.,2017). Therefore, it seems logical to view branding as a process uniting the views and aspirations of place-related stakeholders (Braun et al. 2013). The place brand can be perceived as a co-created spatial experience construct where the spatial experience is related to a space that involves people in a certain activity within a context (Rahimi et al. 2018). The sustainable and smart co-development aiming for multi-level governance in a regional ecosystem context, eg. in the case of a place-brand, requires QH engagement and cooperation (Carayannis and Rakhmatullin, 2014).

Studies on place-brand management have attracted increasing interest in recent years (Helmi, Bridson & Casidy 2020; Bose, Roy, & Tiwari 2016). Cities, regions, and countries are increasingly making strategic use of branding. The notion of place-brand identity (here, PBI) is central to the idea of place-brand management. Place-brand identity is a joint identity formally created for the place to enable it to communicate to external audiences (Anholt 2010; Helmi, Bridson & Casidy 2020, 620-638). Helmi et al. (2020) explored stakeholder engagement with a PBI in the context of country branding in a study that included philosophical and concrete engagement (Table 1). Philosophical engagement is reflected by their moral support, future engagement intention, and positive word-of-mouth behaviour. Concrete engagement, on the other hand, is reflected by place-brand partnerships and the internalisation of PBI in an organisation’s strategy.