Barcelona and SEAT, a History of Lost Opportunity: Corporate Marketing, Nation Branding, and Consumer Nationalism in the Automotive Industry
研究了西雅特汽车公司为何放弃与巴塞罗那的地域关联，转而构建西班牙国家身份，并探讨其被大众收购后的去民族化策略，对理解品牌与地域关系有参考价值。
Why is there no SEAT Barcelona? Barcelona is a well-named place brand, but SEAT consciously has disassociated itself from its geographic origins. This seems rather strange decision if one takes into account the increasing importance of the place-of-origin effect in automotive industry. This article describes how SEAT has constructed its Spanish identity and hidden its Catalan-Barcelona origins, and discusses SEAT’s own growing “denationalization” because of the acquisition by Volkswagen Group by using banal nationalism to gain the loyalty of the country’s nationalist consumers and to fashion a corporate image in line with Spain’s Marca España , or national brand. Through this decision, SEAT has lost the opportunity to associate itself with Marca Barcelona , a successful urban brand.