Capital City Food Brand Building: Case Food Helsinki? HEL YEAH!
Heinrichs, Elisabeth (2014)
Heinrichs, Elisabeth
HAAGA-HELIA ammattikorkeakoulu
2014
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Julkaisun pysyvä osoite on
https://urn.fi/URN:NBN:fi:amk-2014120418550
https://urn.fi/URN:NBN:fi:amk-2014120418550
Tiivistelmä
Food tourism, one of the fastest growing trends within the tourism sector, has finally reached foothold in Helsinki. Finland will have its first national food strategy by the end of 2014. To initiate the awareness of Finnish food, Helsinki received its first printed tourist information material - a food brochure - as a result of this thesis project in October 2014. Food tourism is a supporting resource for the tourism destination, which highly affects the economic viability of a region and the competitiveness of it as it’s a year-round attraction. Unique and memorable experiences provided by culinary assets motivate people to choose to travel to one destination over another. Since eating is a social activity, also the planning of such printed tourist information material should be a social process. In Helsinki food is considered a part of the Hel Yeah umbrella marketing theme, which focuses on promoting urban culture.
This thesis project aimed to put in motion Finland’s capital city Helsinki’s food brand building because the city has a versatile food culture but still no known food identity. The theoretical framework of this thesis embraced three main topics: food tourism, branding in the context of place branding and marketing, and consumer behavior. The empirical study in this thesis project used a constructive research approach. However, as methodologies can complete each other the main methodologies used in this thesis project are service design (co-creation) with a complementary qualitative research.
This thesis project aimed to put in motion Finland’s capital city Helsinki’s food brand building because the city has a versatile food culture but still no known food identity. The theoretical framework of this thesis embraced three main topics: food tourism, branding in the context of place branding and marketing, and consumer behavior. The empirical study in this thesis project used a constructive research approach. However, as methodologies can complete each other the main methodologies used in this thesis project are service design (co-creation) with a complementary qualitative research.