Identifying a Supranational Image of Southeast Asia using Machine Learning
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Published:
May 25, 2021
Keywords:
Supranational image Destination marketing Southeast Asia ASEAN Image Analysis Place Branding
Main Article Content
Abstract
The core of place marketing and branding is the concept of place image which can be defined as a group’s or an individual’s perception towards a particular place. Images represent a simplification of a large number of associations and pieces of information connected with the places. A level of place image that requires further investigation is supranational image – a level of a place image that is larger than a country. Therefore, the purpose of this research is to introduce a new method to identify the supranational image of Southeast Asia (SEA). This new method can help identify a unified supranational image of SEA, to transfer image from stronger countries to weaker ones, and to create regional thematic products and services. This research uses a combination of Google Cloud Vision AI and a topic modelling algorithm, latent Dirichlet allocation (LDA) to analyse 50,000 Flickr photos of the 10 countries and to identify the image of SEA which comprises beautiful and diverse landscape, rich tropical nature, elegant historic and religious architecture, bustling city scenes, and cultural and recreational activities.
Article Details
How to Cite
Sukanthong, K., & Taecharungroj, V. (2021). Identifying a Supranational Image of Southeast Asia using Machine Learning. Journal of International Studies, Prince of Songkla University, 11(1), 215–252. Retrieved from https://so03.tci-thaijo.org/index.php/jis/article/view/252556
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Research Articles
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References
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Andersson, M., & Paajanen, M. (2012). Common or competing products? Towards supra-national branding in BaltMet Promo. Journal of Place Management and Development, 5(1), 56-69.
Braun, E., Eshuis, J., & Klijn, E.-H. (2014). The effectiveness of place brand communication. Cities, 41, 64-70.
Browning, C. S., & Ferraz de Oliveira, A. (2017). Reading brand Africa geopolitically: Nation branding, subaltern geopolitics and the persistence of politics. Geopolitics, 22(3), 640-664.
Cai, L. A. (2002). Cooperative branding for rural destinations. Annals of tourism research, 29(3), 720-742.
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Day, J., Skidmore, S., & Koller, T. (2002). Image selection in destination positioning: A new approach. Journal of vacation marketing, 8(2), 177-186.
Deng, N., & Li, X. R. (2018). Feeling a destination through the “right” photos: A machine learning model for DMOs’ photo selection. Tourism management, 65, 267-278.
Dinnie, K. (2004). Place branding: Overview of an emerging literature. Place branding, 1(1), 106-110.
Dooley, G., & Bowie, D. (2005). Place brand architecture: Strategic management of the brand portfolio. Place branding, 1(4), 402-419.
Elliot, S., Papadopoulos, N., & Kim, S. S. (2011). An integrative model of place image: Exploring relationships between destination, product, and country images. Journal of Travel Research, 50(5), 520-534.
Ghimire, K. B. (2001). Regional tourism and South‐South economic cooperation. The Geographical Journal, 167(2), 99-110.
Greaves, N., & Skinner, H. (2010). The importance of destination image analysis to UK rural tourism. Marketing Intelligence & Planning, 28(4), 486-507.
Greenacre, M. (1992). Correspondence analysis in medical research. Statistical methods in medical research, 1(1), 97-117.
Hosany, S., Ekinci, Y., & Uysal, M. (2006). Destination image and destination personality: An application of branding theories to tourism places. Journal of business research, 59(5), 638-642.
Hosseini, H., Xiao, B., & Poovendran, R. (2017). Google's Cloud Vision API Is Not Robust To Noise. Paper presented at the 2017 16th IEEE International Conference on Machine Learning and Applications (ICMLA).
Kavaratzis, M. (2004). From city marketing to city branding: Towards a theoretical framework for developing city brands. Place branding, 1(1), 58-73.
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Pedeliento, G., & Kavaratzis, M. (2019). Bridging the gap between culture, identity and image: A structurationist conceptualization of place brands and place branding. Journal of Product & Brand Management.
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Song, H., Wang, J., & Han, H. (2019). Effect of image, satisfaction, trust, love, and respect on loyalty formation for name-brand coffee shops. International Journal of Hospitality Management, 79, 50-59.
Taecharungroj, V. (2018). City-district divergence grid: a multi-level city brand positioning tool. Place Branding and Public Diplomacy, 14(2), 101-114.
Taecharungroj, V., & Mathayomchan, B. (2020a). The big picture of cities: Analysing Flickr photos of 222 cities worldwide. Cities, 102, 102741.
Taecharungroj, V., & Mathayomchan, B. (2020b). Traveller‐generated destination image: Analysing Flickr photos of 193 countries worldwide. International Journal of Tourism Research.
Tasci, A. D., & Gartner, W. C. (2007). Destination image and its functional relationships. Journal of Travel Research, 45(4), 413-425.
Therkelsen, A., & Gram, M. (2010). Branding Europe–between nations, regions and continents. Scandinavian Journal of Hospitality and Tourism, 10(2), 107-128.
Timothy, D. J. (2003). Supranationalist alliances and tourism: Insights from ASEAN and SAARC. Current Issues in Tourism, 6(3), 250-266.
Van Dijck, J. (2011). Flickr and the culture of connectivity: Sharing views, experiences, memories. Memory Studies, 4(4), 401-415.
Witte, J.-J., & Braun, E. (2015). Cross-border place branding in Europe. In Inter-regional place branding (pp. 87-98): Springer.
Wong, E. P., Mistilis, N., & Dwyer, L. (2011). A framework for analyzing intergovernmental collaboration–The case of ASEAN tourism. Tourism Management, 32(2), 367-376.
Zenker, S., & Braun, E. (2010). Branding a city: A conceptual approach for place branding and place brand management.
Zenker, S., & Jacobsen, B. P. (2015). Introduction to interregional place branding. In Inter-Regional Place Branding (pp. 1-11): Springer.
Appendix
Activities photos
AC1: https://www.flickr.com/photos/15368831@N00/3976204032
AC2: https://www.flickr.com/photos/88192491@N08/8797297908
AC3: https://www.flickr.com/photos/34534185@N00/6605022485
AC4: https://www.flickr.com/photos/53836467@N07/9032638107
AC5: https://www.flickr.com/photos/65548818@N00/16301625821
AC6: https://www.flickr.com/photos/54238729@N07/14346024054
Architecture photos
AR1: https://www.flickr.com/photos/17291033@N00/4839832214
AR2: https://www.flickr.com/photos/71048973@N00/12842517294
AR3: https://www.flickr.com/photos/88151946@N00/33773761641
AR4: https://www.flickr.com/photos/31190896@N08/6499612057
AR5: https://www.flickr.com/photos/126971360@N02/24725835765
AR6: https://www.flickr.com/photos/69862881@N00/8883443568
Nature photos
NA1: https://www.flickr.com/photos/22451301@N00/10639019666
NA2: https://www.flickr.com/photos/89604217@N04/8159117102
NA3: https://www.flickr.com/photos/46133228@N02/34039009110
NA4: https://www.flickr.com/photos/58989164@N02/6283123074
NA5: https://www.flickr.com/photos/106254613@N05/10492959275
NA6: https://www.flickr.com/photos/39415470@N02/8087489499
City photos
CI1: https://www.flickr.com/photos/44124447497@N01/400140019
CI2: https://www.flickr.com/photos/25725480@N00/4825899210
CI3: https://www.flickr.com/photos/26781577@N07/11512501443
CI4: https://www.flickr.com/photos/75212875@N02/36019310096
CI5: https://www.flickr.com/photos/52741348@N02/30197582287
CI6: https://www.flickr.com/photos/45928922@N03/8509721095
Landscape photos
LA1: https://www.flickr.com/photos/88192491@N08/8786656659
LA2: https://www.flickr.com/photos/75212875@N02/35823805414
LA3: https://www.flickr.com/photos/147711984@N08/27841515309
LA4: https://www.flickr.com/photos/100635695@N04/23029314679
LA5: https://www.flickr.com/photos/112649395@N05/40295658672
LA6: https://www.flickr.com/photos/31366043@N03/14862374415
Aitken, R., & Campelo, A. (2011). The four Rs of place branding. Journal of Marketing Management, 27(9-10), 913-933.
Anandkumar, A., Foster, D. P., Hsu, D. J., Kakade, S. M., & Liu, Y.-K. (2012). A spectral algorithm for latent dirichlet allocation. Paper presented at the Advances in Neural Information Processing Systems.
Andéhn, M., & Zenker, S. (2015). Place branding in systems of place–on the interrelation of nations and supranational places. In Inter-Regional Place Branding (pp. 25-37): Springer.
Andersson, M., & Paajanen, M. (2012). Common or competing products? Towards supra-national branding in BaltMet Promo. Journal of Place Management and Development, 5(1), 56-69.
Braun, E., Eshuis, J., & Klijn, E.-H. (2014). The effectiveness of place brand communication. Cities, 41, 64-70.
Browning, C. S., & Ferraz de Oliveira, A. (2017). Reading brand Africa geopolitically: Nation branding, subaltern geopolitics and the persistence of politics. Geopolitics, 22(3), 640-664.
Cai, L. A. (2002). Cooperative branding for rural destinations. Annals of tourism research, 29(3), 720-742.
Chaulagain, S., Wiitala, J., & Fu, X. (2019). The impact of country image and destination image on US tourists’ travel intention. Journal of Destination Marketing & Management, 12, 1-11.
Day, J., Skidmore, S., & Koller, T. (2002). Image selection in destination positioning: A new approach. Journal of vacation marketing, 8(2), 177-186.
Deng, N., & Li, X. R. (2018). Feeling a destination through the “right” photos: A machine learning model for DMOs’ photo selection. Tourism management, 65, 267-278.
Dinnie, K. (2004). Place branding: Overview of an emerging literature. Place branding, 1(1), 106-110.
Dooley, G., & Bowie, D. (2005). Place brand architecture: Strategic management of the brand portfolio. Place branding, 1(4), 402-419.
Elliot, S., Papadopoulos, N., & Kim, S. S. (2011). An integrative model of place image: Exploring relationships between destination, product, and country images. Journal of Travel Research, 50(5), 520-534.
Ghimire, K. B. (2001). Regional tourism and South‐South economic cooperation. The Geographical Journal, 167(2), 99-110.
Greaves, N., & Skinner, H. (2010). The importance of destination image analysis to UK rural tourism. Marketing Intelligence & Planning, 28(4), 486-507.
Greenacre, M. (1992). Correspondence analysis in medical research. Statistical methods in medical research, 1(1), 97-117.
Hosany, S., Ekinci, Y., & Uysal, M. (2006). Destination image and destination personality: An application of branding theories to tourism places. Journal of business research, 59(5), 638-642.
Hosseini, H., Xiao, B., & Poovendran, R. (2017). Google's Cloud Vision API Is Not Robust To Noise. Paper presented at the 2017 16th IEEE International Conference on Machine Learning and Applications (ICMLA).
Kavaratzis, M. (2004). From city marketing to city branding: Towards a theoretical framework for developing city brands. Place branding, 1(1), 58-73.
Kokosalakis, C., Bagnall, G., Selby, M., & Burns, S. (2006). Place image and urban regeneration in Liverpool. International Journal of Consumer Studies, 30(4), 389-397.
Liu, Y. -Y., Tseng, F. -M., & Tseng, Y. -H. (2018). Big Data analytics for forecasting tourism destination arrivals with the applied Vector Autoregression model. Technological Forecasting and Social Change, 130, 123-134.
Magnus, J. (2016). International branding of the Nordic region. Place Branding and Public Diplomacy, 12(2-3), 195-200.
Maskeri, G., Sarkar, S., & Heafield, K. (2008). Mining business topics in source code using latent dirichlet allocation. Paper presented at the Proceedings of the 1st India software engineering conference.
Mulfari, D., Celesti, A., Fazio, M., Villari, M., & Puliafito, A. (2016). Using Google Cloud Vision in assistive technology scenarios. Paper presented at the 2016 IEEE Symposium on Computers and Communication (ISCC).
Nathan, M., Vandore, E., & Voss, G. (2019). Spatial imaginaries and tech cities: place-branding East London’s digital economy. Journal of Economic Geography, 19(2), 409-432.
Pedeliento, G., & Kavaratzis, M. (2019). Bridging the gap between culture, identity and image: A structurationist conceptualization of place brands and place branding. Journal of Product & Brand Management.
Petri, P. A., Plummer, M., & Zhai, F. (2010). The ASEAN Economic Community: A general equilibrium analysis. Available at SSRN 1682200.
Ramit-Medrano, L. (2017). ASEAN Economic Community, Intellectual Property, and Future Directions for Patent Administration in the Region. Ateneo LJ, 62, 1191.
Salikha, A. (2019). RANKED: International Tourist Arrivals In Southeast Asia Countries 2018. Retrieved from https://seasia.co/2019/03/15/international-tourist-arrivals-in-southeast-asia-countries-2018
Song, H., Wang, J., & Han, H. (2019). Effect of image, satisfaction, trust, love, and respect on loyalty formation for name-brand coffee shops. International Journal of Hospitality Management, 79, 50-59.
Taecharungroj, V. (2018). City-district divergence grid: a multi-level city brand positioning tool. Place Branding and Public Diplomacy, 14(2), 101-114.
Taecharungroj, V., & Mathayomchan, B. (2020a). The big picture of cities: Analysing Flickr photos of 222 cities worldwide. Cities, 102, 102741.
Taecharungroj, V., & Mathayomchan, B. (2020b). Traveller‐generated destination image: Analysing Flickr photos of 193 countries worldwide. International Journal of Tourism Research.
Tasci, A. D., & Gartner, W. C. (2007). Destination image and its functional relationships. Journal of Travel Research, 45(4), 413-425.
Therkelsen, A., & Gram, M. (2010). Branding Europe–between nations, regions and continents. Scandinavian Journal of Hospitality and Tourism, 10(2), 107-128.
Timothy, D. J. (2003). Supranationalist alliances and tourism: Insights from ASEAN and SAARC. Current Issues in Tourism, 6(3), 250-266.
Van Dijck, J. (2011). Flickr and the culture of connectivity: Sharing views, experiences, memories. Memory Studies, 4(4), 401-415.
Witte, J.-J., & Braun, E. (2015). Cross-border place branding in Europe. In Inter-regional place branding (pp. 87-98): Springer.
Wong, E. P., Mistilis, N., & Dwyer, L. (2011). A framework for analyzing intergovernmental collaboration–The case of ASEAN tourism. Tourism Management, 32(2), 367-376.
Zenker, S., & Braun, E. (2010). Branding a city: A conceptual approach for place branding and place brand management.
Zenker, S., & Jacobsen, B. P. (2015). Introduction to interregional place branding. In Inter-Regional Place Branding (pp. 1-11): Springer.
Appendix
Activities photos
AC1: https://www.flickr.com/photos/15368831@N00/3976204032
AC2: https://www.flickr.com/photos/88192491@N08/8797297908
AC3: https://www.flickr.com/photos/34534185@N00/6605022485
AC4: https://www.flickr.com/photos/53836467@N07/9032638107
AC5: https://www.flickr.com/photos/65548818@N00/16301625821
AC6: https://www.flickr.com/photos/54238729@N07/14346024054
Architecture photos
AR1: https://www.flickr.com/photos/17291033@N00/4839832214
AR2: https://www.flickr.com/photos/71048973@N00/12842517294
AR3: https://www.flickr.com/photos/88151946@N00/33773761641
AR4: https://www.flickr.com/photos/31190896@N08/6499612057
AR5: https://www.flickr.com/photos/126971360@N02/24725835765
AR6: https://www.flickr.com/photos/69862881@N00/8883443568
Nature photos
NA1: https://www.flickr.com/photos/22451301@N00/10639019666
NA2: https://www.flickr.com/photos/89604217@N04/8159117102
NA3: https://www.flickr.com/photos/46133228@N02/34039009110
NA4: https://www.flickr.com/photos/58989164@N02/6283123074
NA5: https://www.flickr.com/photos/106254613@N05/10492959275
NA6: https://www.flickr.com/photos/39415470@N02/8087489499
City photos
CI1: https://www.flickr.com/photos/44124447497@N01/400140019
CI2: https://www.flickr.com/photos/25725480@N00/4825899210
CI3: https://www.flickr.com/photos/26781577@N07/11512501443
CI4: https://www.flickr.com/photos/75212875@N02/36019310096
CI5: https://www.flickr.com/photos/52741348@N02/30197582287
CI6: https://www.flickr.com/photos/45928922@N03/8509721095
Landscape photos
LA1: https://www.flickr.com/photos/88192491@N08/8786656659
LA2: https://www.flickr.com/photos/75212875@N02/35823805414
LA3: https://www.flickr.com/photos/147711984@N08/27841515309
LA4: https://www.flickr.com/photos/100635695@N04/23029314679
LA5: https://www.flickr.com/photos/112649395@N05/40295658672
LA6: https://www.flickr.com/photos/31366043@N03/14862374415