Assessing the significant factors influencing the formation of the city image in order to effective urban branding management, (Case study: Shiraz, Iran)

Urban branding, as a new approach toward urban development, improves city image in different ways by changing the visual image of the city into a brand image. this study aims to assess the importance of factors affecting city image formation in shiraz city. the main questions of this investigation are what dimensions composing the inner image of shiraz, as well as what is the significance of each of these dimensions. this is a descriptive-analytical study using a questionnaire tool. the statistical population is the citizens of shiraz with the sample size of 384 people using cochran’s formula. validity of questionnaire questions was verified by professors and experts in the field of urban planning, and reliability of research questions was calculated with cronbach’s alpha 0.86. to analyze the data of the questionnaire, spss17 software has been used. the results of the kolmogorov-smirnov test showed normality of the data. finally, the one-sample t-test was used to investigate the research hypotheses. the results showed that the “architectural and urban attraction” and the “environment” component had the highest impact on the formation of the city’s image in the effective urban branding management, followed by the components of “economics and business” and “international city position”, “culture”, “social issues”, “self-knowledge of citizens”, and “infrastructure and transportation, and traffic communication”, respectively (with sig= 0.000 and 95% confidence level).