Assessment Of The Value Of Regional Brands

This paper is an exploring research, the goal of which is to reveal the ingredients of the Location Brand Value and establish an appraisal model.The research is divided into two steps. The purpose of the first step is to explore the existence of the Location Brand Value and its ingredients. The second is to set up an appraisal model for the Location Brand Value.In the first step, the existence of the Location Brand Value is confirmed by using the Location Brand within the boundaries of China as the research object, taking the GTM (Grounded Theory Method) research model as instruction and employing the methods of content analysis, Questionnaire survey, qualitative interview, focus group, etc. Meanwhile, ingredients of Location Brand Value are concluded. In this research, Location Brand Value refers to the competitive advantages brought by the local industries and is measured by the excess cash flow of the local beneficial industries.First of all, with the aid of the qualitative analysis software MAXqda2, the research performs an exploration of the content analytic method.The government announced or the media published data from Chinese 18 provinces (cities or autonomous regions), 30 cities (counties) which indicate the benefit of the Local Brand since the beginning of this century have been collected and analyzed in this research. The result confirms the existence of the Local Brand Value and obtained 5 categories 11 kinds of benefits which break through the corresponding elaboration of previous reports and provide powerful clues for the further exploring studies.In addition, in order to break the accuracy and efficiency limits of content analysis. The research selected a typical region of Location Brand and carried out a questionnaire survey of the local citizens. The overall population of the local area is 8.5 million inhabitants and the sample capacity is 2,000. According to the present age social class theory, stratified random sample method was adopted. The research revealed the main body and the owner of the Location Brand, namely the understanding of interior populace to the existence and the ingredients of Local Brand Value. The comparison of this result with the conclusion of content analytic method analysis verified their consistence.Furthermore, employing qualitative interview and focus group, the dimension division and the operation definition of the Location Brand Value concept werediscriminated and clarified.Finally, the conclusion of the first step was obtained.In the second step, using the method of deduction and reasoning, the model for Location Brand Value was deducted and established according to the property appraisal theory, the product brand value appraisal theory and the property combinatorial theory, etc. as well as the results of the first step.The paper has further studied four variables which the appraisal model application needs to determine: the limits of the beneficial industry; the forecast of the excess cash flow of the local beneficial industry; the determination of the commutation rate and the forecast of period division. The definite technologies for the four variables are discussed.Before the conclusion, the paper emphasizes the reasons why the location brand evaluation is important for the local enterprises to achieve their competitive advantages.After two stages research, the paper conclusion is:1. The Location Brand (or brand activities) can bring profits for this area, namely the Location Brand Value exists.2. The benefit from Location Brand can be divided into several dimensions. For example the industrial income, the social income and so on. This research defining the Location Brand Value is refers to the competitive advantage value that location brand brings to the local industry which is measured by the excess cash flow of the local beneficial industry.3. At certain evaluation time, Location Brand Value is equal to the sum of the commutation of predicted excess cash flow of the assets combination of the local beneficial industry. The formula is:LBV₀, the Location Brand Value on the appraisal benchmark day; CV₀, the competitive advantage value that location brand brings to the local industry; CF_t, the t-th predicted excess cash flow of the assets combination. Assuming that the commutation rate of predicted cash flow is equal in all periods , R represents all the commutation rate and t represents the beneficial periods of the Location Brand.This is the appraisal model for Location Brand Value.There are creativeness in both the theory itself and the utilization of the analysistools.Firstly, the studies on Location Brand Value are few and the studies on appraisal of the value are even rare which consequently show the innovation of the theory in this paper;Secondly, applying the assert combination theory to the brand appraisal has certain creative meaning in the appraisal value theory.Thirdly, the comprehensive exertion of multiple research methods, including using MAXqda2 to carry out qualitative analysis, has certain creative meaning in the applications of analysis tools.Because of the limits on researching level and materials, this study bears several limitations.For one thing, since the information on Location Brand Value and the appraisal data are rare, the research is more based on other qualitative analysis methods. As a result, the established model needs to be tested by more data; for another thing the relationship between the market performances of local brand and the commutation rate of value appraisal is waiting for further studies.