Deriving Perceived Brand Personality Traits of Thriving Cities: Empirical Investigation of City-Related Subreddits

City brand personality is a relatively new concept that is often equated with destination brand personality. However, we argue that the two should be kept conceptually distinct. After a brief but complete overview of the literature on the topic emphasizing different ontological and epistemological concerns with state of the art, we propose a holistic methodological approach to study the perceived brand personality of successful cities. Using the 2021 Resonance Consultancy ranking of “best cities” as the basis for our sample, we analyze the frequency of 145 city-related words across multiple thread titles of 96 city-related Reddit communities. Principal component analysis reveals the existence of two perceived city brand personality traits common to successful cities: transiency and appeal. Accordingly, we derive four city brand personality types of successful cities: transient cities with either domestic or touristic appeal and permanent cities with either domestic or touristic appeal. The classification is primarily useful for cities’ administrators to assess their projected city brand personality and minimize the discrepancy between projected and perceived personality city brand personality.