Country image and related constructs, such as country reputation, brand, and identity, have been subjects of debate in fields such as marketing, psychology, sociology, communication, and political science. This volume provides an overview of current scholarship, places related research interests across disciplines in a common context, and illustrates connections among the constructs. Discussing how different scholarly perspectives can be applied to answer a broad range of related research questions, this volume aims to contribute to the emergence of a more theoretical, open, and interdisciplinary study of country image, reputation, brand, and identity.

This book integrates new thinking on the image, marketing, and branding of places at all levels, from town squares to cities and countries, and of the products and peoples associated with them, thereby bridging the ‘country’ and ‘place’ silos in place-related research and practice. Insightful contributions from top scholars reflect fresh theorizing and provide a critical appraisal of conventional wisdom by juxtaposing intriguing contexts, questioning commonplace practices, and challenging methodologies and theoretical assumptions.

This book constitutes the refereed post-conference proceedings of the First International Conference on Society with Future: Smart and Liveable Cities, SC4Life 2019, which took place in Braga, Portugal, in December 2019. The 13 revised full papers were carefully reviewed and selected from 19 submissions. The conference has brought researchers, developers, and practitioners who are leveraging and develoing new knowledge on the topic of smart cities, offering more efficiency to main infrastructures, utilities and services, creating a sustainable urban environment that improves the quality of life for its citizens and enhances economic development.

This book presents the latest knowledge on the still under-researched field of academic tourism, which over the past decade has gained in importance at local and national economic levels as a result of increasing international mobility of students and academic staff in higher education. A wide range of themes are explored from various perspectives, with the focus on Europe. Particular attention is paid to academic tourism demand, expenditure, and economic impact; the relationships between academic tourism and local and regional development, sustainable development, and environmental sustainability; and the importance of academic tourism for the internationalization of higher education and international cooperation and development. Further topics to be considered include the significance of academic tourism for the dynamics of tourism destinations and insights from experimental tourism research. In addition to theoretical chapters and state of the art reviews, readers will find insightful empirical and case studies. The book will be of interest to academics, researchers, students, and practitioners, including policy makers.

Strategic communication is becoming more relevant in communication sciences, though it needs to deepen its reflective practices, especially considering its potential in a VUCA world — volatile, uncertain, complex and ambiguous. The capillary, holistic and result-oriented nature that portrays this scientific field has led to the imperative of expanding knowledge about the different approaches, methodologies and impacts in all kinds of organisations when strategic communication is applied. Therefore Strategic Communication in Context: Theoretical Debates and Applied Research assembles several studies and essays by renowned authors who explore the topic from different angles, thus testing the elasticity of the concept. Moreover, this group of authors represents various schools of thought and geographies, making this book particularly rich and cross-disciplinary.

Mountainous and rural areas throughout the world have continually been attributed with several hinderances including poverty, faulty governance, and susceptibility to natural disasters. However, with the recent development of tourism, these provinces have seen a strong rise in visitation. Despite this increase in economic sustainability, planners are still presented with many challenges as they try to balance developmental and ecological considerations. Global Opportunities and Challenges for Rural and Mountain Tourism provides emerging research exploring the integration of mountain tourism development and innovative practices for managing contemporary issues and challenges of tourism in these regions including socio-economic impacts, role of stakeholders, and promotional strategies for sustainable tourism development. Featuring coverage on a broad range of topics such as cultural heritage, marketing strategies, and value chain systems, this book is ideally designed for travel agents, tour directors, tour developers, hotel managers, hospitality and tourism professionals, industry practitioners, researchers, geographical scientists, planners, academicians, and students.