The Role of Place Image in Business Location Decisions

The location where businesses choose to locate or re-locate their businesses, also known as site selection, is an important policy matter for economic development practitioners and academics since significant amount of resources are spent in this area. As places spend a great deal of public dollars marketing their city, region, and state to potential investors and businesses, private sector dollars from business invest a significant amount on land, labor, and capital to get these new facilities and sites up and running. To date, most of the literature as it relates to place image and business site selection decisions examine traditional factors related to the decision-making process. This dissertation presents exploratory research which for the first time summarizes this multi-disciplinary literature and deconstructs its five components into: brand, visual image, reputation, sense of place, and identity. Beyond this, this research continues to open the scholarly conversation on how locations are advertised and sold and how this marketing can affect where businesses locate their headquarters. Using a literature review, interviews, grounded theory, a survey of professionals in the field of site selection, and an analysis of the five components of place image using structural equation modeling, this research quantitatively investigates the association of place image on site selection of headquarters. In all, the analysis found that brand, visual image, and reputation have a positive effect on place image. And place image had a positive direct effect on site selection decision. Also, brand and reputation showed a stronger effect in east and west coast states, and reputation was more important for small and medium sized companies and public companies. The measures for sense of place and identity were not found significant in the model. since place image is a complicated concept and hard to quantify. In the end, this research found that the concepts of place image are complicated, highly personal, and difficult to change. Through empirically linking place image components to headquarters site selection decision making this dissertation creates a valid argument for what economic development practitioners and academics have known but not been able to tangibly measure: that place image matters and it can influence the business of site selection

Economic Impact of JumpStart Inc. Portfolio and Client Companies, 2010

2010 economic impact of JumpStart Inc. Portfolio and Client Companie

Regional Dashboard of Economic Indicators 2009: Comparative Performance of Leading, Midwest, and Northeast Ohio Metropolitan Areas

The objective of this study is to continue monitoring the economic performance of Northeast Ohio’s (NEO) metropolitan areas over time and in comparison to other metropolitan areas across the United States, particularly leading metropolitan areas and other large metro areas located in the Midwest. The study monitors economic conditions prior to the current recession. This fourth study of dashboard indicators describes the findings using the framework that was developed in previous studies. It uses the same four measures of economic growth and nine dashboard indicators and their underlying variables for 136 metropolitan areas with population between 300,000 and 3.5 million. The NEO region is represented by its four Metropolitan Statistical Areas, including Akron, Canton‐Massillon, Cleveland‐Elyria‐Mentor, and Youngstown‐Warren‐Boardman

Regional Dashboard of Economic Indicators 2009: Comparative Performance of Leading, Midwest, and Northeast Ohio Metropolitan Areas

The objective of this study is to continue monitoring the economic performance of Northeast Ohio’s (NEO) metropolitan areas over time and in comparison to other metropolitan areas across the United States, particularly leading metropolitan areas and other large metro areas located in the Midwest. The study monitors economic conditions prior to the current recession. This fourth study of dashboard indicators describes the findings using the framework that was developed in previous studies. It uses the same four measures of economic growth and nine dashboard indicators and their underlying variables for 136 metropolitan areas with population between 300,000 and 3.5 million. The NEO region is represented by its four Metropolitan Statistical Areas, including Akron, Canton‐Massillon, Cleveland‐Elyria‐Mentor, and Youngstown‐Warren‐Boardman