Brand on the run: place brands as judgement devices and sources of local advantage in the music industry
研究了地方品牌在符号商品市场中的经济作用，通过在线音乐平台数据发现，地方品牌能降低搜索成本，并作为创意集群中生产者的战略资源，其效果不依赖于品牌信号的具体内容。
Products from certain areas are assumed to share qualities by virtue of where they are made.This article considers the economic significance of such place brands in the wider market for symbolic goods.It forwards a theory of these as judgement devices, whereby place reputation serves to lower search costs in symbolic goods markets with excess supply.This theory is investigated through a study of an online music platform where a weak form of place branding is available to producers.Results suggest that branding is associated with musical success at the individual level and that place brands may act as strategic resources for producers from creative clusters.Branding effects do not necessarily depend on the content of the place brand signal (i.e., country acts branded from Nashville are not especially privileged) and may be based in simpler heuristic mechanisms where a listed origin is a stamp of quality or an aid in recognition.