Understanding Stakeholder Participation in the Delivery of Place Branding: An Instrumental Case Study of Saudi Vision 2030

Abstract

Place branding has become a central strategy for countries and cities seeking to project identity, attract investment, and engage citizens. While participation and co-creation are widely emphasised in theory, much less is known about how these ideas are understood and enacted during delivery. This thesis examines how internal stakeholders interpret their roles in the delivery of place branding, drawing on Saudi Arabia’s Vision 2030 as an instrumental case. Using a qualitative interpretivist approach, the study is based on 32 semi-structured interviews with high-level decision makers, stakeholders in roles targeted by Vision 2030 programmes and service sector stakeholders. The findings reveal that participation does not disappear under conditions of strong strategic coordination, but instead emerges in uneven and sometimes fragile ways shaped by institutional arrangements, communicative practices, and cultural expectations. Strategic participation was highly visible, while experiential participation relied largely on individual initiative and affective motivation rather than sustained organisational support. The thesis contributes to place branding scholarship by explaining how co-creation becomes front-loaded at the strategic stage, how participation is formally recognised and closed through evaluative and communicative practices, and why experiential delivery remains difficult to sustain in the absence of supporting infrastructures. It shows that participation is shaped not only by who is included, but by when participation is made consequential and where it is institutionally supported across the branding process. By foregrounding governance, communication, and delivery conditions, the study advances a more sustainable and practice-oriented understanding of co-creation, highlighting a recurring gap between strategic participation and lived brand experience across place branding contexts.