Despite overstated claims of their ‘global’ homogeneity, ubiquity and contribution to ‘flattening’ spatial differences, the geographies of brands and branding actually do matter. This vibrant collection provides a comprehensive reference point for the emergent area of...

P<sc>ower</sc> D. A response to Scott, <italic>Regional Studies</italic>. This paper deals with two main issues. First, it addresses the issue of how we tackle the status of the creative city discourse and how we should understand and react to policy in third-wave cities. Second, it discusses the issue of where we see...

The literature on clusters and cluster building has been rapidly growing both in academic and policy-making circles. Central to this interest and body of work has been the assumption that location in clusters helps firms to exchange, acquire and generate new knowledge. Since knowledge is...

Recent literature on competitiveness has focused on innovation and industrial dynamics. In this paper it is argued that innovation is not enough when competing on global markets, at least in certain types of industries where performance, standards, and perceptions of the product are at the...

Although much research has been published on green/ethical consumer behaviour, the question of how consumers evaluate pro-socially positioned products in the post-purchase stage is still virtually unexplored. This is troubling given the significance of post-purchase evaluations within general...

In this paper we present the results of detailed case-study work on two important music production centres: Stockholm (Sweden) and Kingston (Jamaica). It is shown that both are dynamic innovation and production centres for populate music. In both cases local characteristics of the organisational...

Branding has become so intertwined with consumption that today's consumers have often deeply personal relationships to brands and brand histories. Branding is an attempt to strategically "personify" products and to encapsulate a balance between different economic values: quality, utility,...

To explore the contradictions and problems apparent in contemporary policy towards universities, this article reviews two parallel but related debates: the debate about competitive and prosperous regions and the debate about excellent institutions of research and higher education. It questions...

Fashion companies are involved not only in producing material commodities (clothes), but also in the parallel production of ideas (fashion). The consistent use of outsourcing in the fashion industry means that material production is constantly on the move to low-cost locations. Still high-cost...

In the last decade there has been an increased interest in the cluster approach as a tool for boosting regional competitiveness. In this article practices and processes of regional cluster building in Sweden are examined in order to better understand the key traits that seem to be common to...