City Branding Through Porter’s Competitive Models: Investigating El Shorouk City Market Position

Globalization has affected the transformation and growth of our cities, where some became highly progressive and others are degenerating. The forces of globalization are driving cities to be more competitive in order to attract foreign direct investments and enhance its local economic development while also attracting population to sustain its real-estate capital. City Branding is one of the tools that cities use to market their position and their competitive advantage. Improving cities performance is linked to understanding cities as competitive corporates that follow that same rules of marketing strategies along with understanding the human perception of city and placemaking. The aim of this paper is to analyse the competitive advantage for one of the New Cities in Egypt, El Shorouk City, to be able to formulate a City Branding strategy based on the competitive position of this city within New Cities in Egypt. The methodology for this analysis is depending on Porter’s Competitive Diamond for Nations and his Five Forces Model of Competition. The first model is used for the internal analysis for city’s potential while the second model is used for the external analysis. The paper is using both models in analysing the market position of El Shorouk City and how to better allocate its competitive potentials to formulate a City Branding Strategy that attracts both population and investments. This will in return impact the strategies for placemaking in New Cities which could be directed to capture the economic potentials of these cities.