Abstract: Amidst a constant battle for a share of travelers’ wallets, a city’s competitive edge can be enhanced by its brand. This study examines how cities can boost their competitiveness by developing strong destination brands, much like products and services. The primary objectives are to validate the dimensions of a Customer-Based Brand Equity (CBBE) model in the context of a city and to analyze the relationships among foreign tourists’ perceptions of awareness, image, quality, and loyalty regarding Tirana City as a brand. Employing Partial Least Squares – Structural Equation Modeling (PLS-SEM) on data from 385 usable surveys, the findings substantiate the efficacy of the proposed CBBE model for tourism destinations at the city level, confirming all hypothesized relationships. Notably, city brand awareness has a strong positive association with brand image, while it has a more modest effect on brand quality. City brand image also has a more modest impact on city brand loyalty. These results contribute theoretically by extending CBBE measurement from a country to a city scale and offer practical implications for strategic urban planning and destination marketing initiatives in Tirana.

Keywords: destination marketing, city brand awareness, city brand loyalty, city brand image, city brand quality, customer-based brand equity to a tourism destination (CBBETD), partial-least squares structural equation modelling (PLS-SEM).

Pages: 17-30