Abstract
In this paper, we first organized the concept of place branding based on previous studies of Western brand theory, place branding theory, and marketing theory. Next, the stages of place branding formation were discussed with reference to the concept of the regional resourceization process. While most of the conventional research in this field has been focused on “external empathy,” which is to gain the interest and empathy of customers outside the region by emphasizing the external brand image, attention should be focused on fostering “internal empathy” within the region in order to refine a regional brand identity that can be evaluated by external parties. In contrast, he pointed out that in order to refine a local brand identity that can be evaluated externally, attention should be focused on fostering “internal empathy” within the community. In order to verify the above argument with an actual case study, the author took up a tourism video production project in FY2023 from among the regional collaborative PBL projects as part of Tohoku reconstruction assistance and regional revitalization and examined the mechanism of “internal empathy” from the perspectives of both university students and local people. The mechanism of fostering “empathy within” from the viewpoints of both university students and local people were discussed and the possibility of new “regional creation” was mentioned based on the above. Finally, we discussed directions for exploring place branding from both theoretical and practical perspectives, including the need for quantitative research on the relationship between regional collaborative PBL activities and tourism promotion, and the importance of developing evaluation indicators.
