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The purpose of this paper is to present the background to the development of the World Towns’ Framework, developed in June 2016 at the inaugural World Towns Leadership Summit in Scotland. The paper also provides an academic underpinning to the four pillars of the agreement; a unique sense of identity and place, economy, leadership and citizenship and environment. It ends with a call to action for practitioners, policymakers and organisations providing support to people in places who want to contribute to the development of the Framework and adopt it.

The paper is divided into four sections. The first section gives the background to the development of the World Towns Framework. The second section publishes the World Towns Framework in its entirety. The third section builds an evidence-base for the components or pillars of the World Towns Framework, based upon work undertaken by the think tanks and academic partners involved in its development. The final section sets out a call for action – explaining how the Framework can be further developed and utilised.

The paper contains three main contributions. It articulates a new narrative for towns, neighbourhoods and city districts in responding to contemporary urban challenges; it shapes a new urban agenda for these urban places and it asserts the need for new alliances and approaches essential for a strong competitive economy, which is more inclusive of towns and smaller places, combined with a fairer, more equal society.

The evidence base for the research is limited to the work that has been carried out by the academic institutions and think tanks that supported the development of the World Towns’ Framework.

The practical implication of the World Towns Framework are a shared understanding of how towns and smaller places can engage in management, development and marketing practices that will lead to a stronger economy and fairer society.

The focus upon place uniqueness and identity, a more equitable economy, a greener and cleaner environment and stronger place leadership and citizenship can lead to better, fairer and more liveable places.

This is the first attempt to develop a World Towns Framework to shape urban change outside of cities and metropoles.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the influence of brand interaction in pop-up shops on consumers’ perceptions of luxury fashion retailers.

Adopting an exploratory, inductive research design, semi-structured interviews were undertaken with female respondents, consistent with the profile of both typical pop-up and “new luxury” customers, who had recently visited a luxury fashion pop-up shop.

Factors influencing consumers’ perceptions of the luxury brands whose pop-up shops were visited are identified relating to three key characteristics of pop-up retailing identified from a review of relevant literature, termed the temporal dimension, the promotional emphasis, and the experiential emphasis.

This study explores the perceptions of pop-up shops qualitatively from a consumer’s perspective, providing new insights into the personal and complex motivations and attitudes of new luxury consumers.

This paper aims to analyse the place marketing potential of historic urban “fragments”, with particular reference to old corporate identity symbols still extant in urban space.

Following a discussion of theoretical context, specifically incorporating spatial semiotics and psychogeography, the paper constitutes an interpretive account of a “tour” around the city of Manchester, UK, apprehending and discussing various historic corporate identity fragments still visible in the city.

Historic corporate identity fragments are identified and outlined, and issues arising from their continued existence, in terms of, for example, what constitutes heritage, and how this heritage can be used for the creation of urban distinctiveness (or genius loci) for the purposes of place marketing/branding are discussed.

The potential of heritage to be incorporated into the “representation work” of those responsible for urban management/marketing is highlighted, along with the need for such heritage fragments to be “curated”, if their full potential in this regard is to be realised.

The purpose of this paper is to conceptualise how place management practices in UK housing associations (HAs) involve processes of ecological place management.

Ethnographic fieldwork focusing on how communal spaces are organised on a housing estate in a UK city revealed the importance of negotiation with other actors, including an HA which is responsible for managing the estate. The authors draw on extensive participant observation with residents, as well as interviews with both residents and employees of the HA, to show the wider forces and complexities involved in these ecological place management practices.

This paper identifies hybrid socio-ecological, socio-political and political-economic dynamics unfolding as places are managed and organised. These widen the scope of place management research and practice to account for multiple ways places are organised.

This paper offers a critical perspective on place management, developing an ecological approach that is applicable both to the relatively new context of housing and to more established sites in town and city centres.

This paper’s findings point to ways that housing and place management practitioners, both in the UK and elsewhere, can use an ecological approach to re-frame their strategic and practical actions with regards to “place”.

This paper contributes to unveiling the complexity involved in place management and organisation, thereby encouraging place managers to embrace ecological thinking capable of addressing future challenges.

The purpose of this introductory paper is to outline the theme of – and introduces the papers comprising – this special issue on post-Covid place marketing.

A brief literature review outlines some of the impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic on places and also for place-bound and spatially oriented industry sectors (particularly retailing and tourism and hospitality, which are often the focus of place marketing initiatives) before describing the papers constituting the special issue.

The impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic on places are identified, relating to both economic and more phenomenologically oriented impacts, and the implications for place resilience are considered. The papers comprising the special issue are grouped into two main themes relating to the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on retailing and the impact of the pandemic on place marketing processes.

Notwithstanding the burgeoning literature on the COVID-19 pandemic and its impacts, the papers comprising this special issue focus on specific place-oriented marketing (and retailing) implications, providing potential avenues for future research.

The “pop-up” epithet has become a synonym for virtually any temporary event in a range of commercial, non-commercial and cultural contexts within the urban spatial arena. This paper aims to discuss the role of the pop-up concept within urban space, to address the question articulated in the Call for Papers for this special issue, of whether “everywhere needs to become a marketplace”.

The authors review a range of sources – both academic, popular press and practitioner publications and reports – to inform our critique of the use of the pop-up activities in urban space.

The authors identify four ways in which the pop-up concept can be valorised – pop-up stores and experiences, pop-up agglomerations, pop-up service facilities and pop-up space brokerage services.

Adopting a critical perspective, the authors address pop-up’s implications, especially the impact on urban places and the people within them. This study concludes by discussing the potential for an increased use of pop-up within urban spaces impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic, which could be focused as much on social as economic value.

The purpose of this paper is to review the development and current position of Business Improvement Districts (BIDs) in the UK, drawing on the content within a State-of-the-Art Review of Business Improvement Districts in the UK: setting the agenda for policy, practice and research, commissioned by The BID Foundation and produced by members of the Institute of Place Management.

The paper is divided into seven main sections. The first section defines the concept of BIDs, outlines their process of establishment and provides a brief critique of BIDs from the academic literature. Second, the process of introducing BIDs into the UK is discussed. Third, the different types of BIDs that currently exist are detailed. The fourth section outlines the development of BIDs since their introduction in 2004. Fifth, an analysis of BID ballots is provided, involving details of ballot results, demonstrating a general improvement as BIDs develop over time. The sixth section comprises a discussion of unsuccessful ballots and BID terminations. The paper concludes with a brief analysis of issues BIDs face in the UK, looking into the future.

The paper contains three main empirical contributions: first, a numerical analysis of the different types of BIDs in the UK; second, a timeline of their development from 2005 to 2018; and third, a statistical analysis of BID ballot results over this period, with an indication of the numbers of unsuccessful ballots and BID terminations.

This paper provides the first comprehensive overview of BIDs in the UK detailing development and performance (e.g. ballot results) in the 15 years since their introduction.

Fashion retailers have increasingly adopted consumer-facing in-store technology (CFIT) to enhance the customer experience/service provision. This paper aims to explore managerial experiences and sociotechnical implications of introducing these technologies into organizational working processes.

This study draws on interpretive analysis of semi-structured interviews with 74 senior fashion retail industry practitioners, technology providers and consultants to understand managerial perspectives on technological innovation issues.

Endogenous and exogenous factors act as drivers or barriers to CFIT adoption and are influenced by strategic and tactical motives. Key issues that retail managers encounter include challenges in aligning technology implementation with retailer brand image to manage risk and reputation, with additional complexity arising from different internal and/or external actors involved, as well as required levels of change in organizational structure.

This study contributes an empirically derived framework identifying reasons for – and the drivers/barriers influencing – fashion retailers' CFIT adoption, classifying three broad approaches to CFIT adoption: embedded, transformative and opportunistic.

The purpose of this paper is to explore fans’ reactions to corporate naming rights sponsorship of football club stadia and identify a range of contextual factors impacting these reactions.

A qualitative, quasi-ethnographic research design is adopted, focusing on three football clubs in North West England. Data are gathered through online message board discussions, focus groups and auto-ethnographic approaches.

Geographic, image and functional dimensions of sponsorship fit are noted as contextual factors in determining fans’ reactions to corporate stadium names. It is also proposed that some forms of fit (in particular geographic fit) are more important than others in this regard. Beyond issues of fit, three additional contextual factors are identified that potentially influence fans’ reactions to corporate stadium names: prior involvement with the club by the sponsor; fans’ perceived impact of the sponsorship investment; and whether the stadium is new or long-established.

Future research might examine the relative importance and implications of the identified contextual factors, alongside seeking other potential areas of contextual framing.

Sponsorship naming rights negotiations need to be sensitive to a variety of contextual factors. Furthermore, sponsors would do well to have a good awareness of their own brand image and its congruency with the identity of the club and fan base.

This nuanced, qualitative analysis extends existing, quantitative-based research by identifying a range of contextual factors which shape fans’ reactions to corporate stadium naming.