Exploring the Impact of Brexit on UK City Brand Perception - The Case of Edinburgh

This exploratory research uncovers the current perception of brand Edinburgh among the residents of Munich, and explores potential attitudes, feelings and emotions of the participants towards Edinburgh and its city regions post-Brexit. It essentially initiates an insight into the perception of Edinburgh’s city-region brand from the perspective of its twin city of Munich. The study design is qualitative in nature, using non-probability sampling method. The place brand vision model was utilised to compile questions relevant for this study in 2017 after the UK referendum, which sought to discontinue its membership of the European Union. Three focus group interviews (n=17) were conducted to facilitate discussion. Transcript-based analysis technique was applied to analyse the data. The results revealed variations in the perception of place brand image between people who had visited Edinburgh and those who had not. Furthermore, there were differences in perceptions among the age groups