Ricerc@Sapienza

The research compares the social representations evoked by brands of the ten European Capitals (Rome, London, Paris, Helsinki, Vienna, Warsaw, Berlin, Madrid, Brussels and Lisbon) among potential first-visitors. The associative network technique has been applied using as iconic stimuli both the institutional stems and the commercial logos of each of the ten Capitals. Moreover, a grid has been created ad hoc to identify the distinctive elements of the institutional stems and the commercial logos.

The contribution considers – among others - the socio-economic dimension of ten European
historical Capitals through the lens of @ - branding applied to the tourism sector.
Starting from Anderson’s Theory (1983) and continuing with the definitions and key concepts of
brand identity (Aaker, 1996) and brand image (Keller, 1998; Cai, 2002) for a destination’s
successful branding, here we propose a re-interpretation of “destination branding” (Morrison &
Anderson, 2002) in terms of “destination@-branding” by considering the city destination through

The objective of this contribution -included in the media studies of a wider research program initiated
by de Rosa in the 1980s- is to capture the “virtual brand image” of ten European historical Capitals
cities through the analysis of the commercial websites Booking.com and TripWolf. The city
destination through Internet has been considered not only as an object of perception but also, more
comprehensively, as an object of social representation. The descriptive results highlight – among

The chapter compares the social representations evoked by brands of the 10 European capitals (Rome,
London, Paris, Helsinki, Vienna, Warsaw, Berlin, Madrid, Brussels, and Lisbon) among potential firstvisitors.
The associative network technique has been applied using as iconic stimuli both the institutional
stems and the commercial logos of each of the 10 capitals. Moreover, a grid has been created ad hoc to
identify the distinctive elements of the institutional stems and the commercial logos. The analysis of the