CITY BRANDING AND UNIVERSITIES: HOW CITY BRANDS CAN USE UNIVERSITIES AS PART OF THEIR STRATEGY

City branding is a topic discussed very much in tourism and also in marketing, its impact being visible in both fields. While tourism is concerned with city branding because it can help destinations attract more tourists and make more profit, the marketing field is trying to find new ways to promote, position and differentiate city brands in order to gain a competitive advantage in this overcrowded market. On the other hand, city brands can also provide benefits regarding consumption behavior of customers, who are more informed than ever and have a lot of different choices to make, but less time at their disposal and usually risk is involved in these decisions. In this paper, the authors will develop and use the economic approach of treating places (e.g., cities) as consumer products, from a functional paradigmatic perspective of the brand, from which individuals are seen as �homo economicus�, consumer decisions are based on rational motives, so there are transactions between the brand and the consumer which are more or less tangible. Although there are many directions in which city brand strategy can go (culture, entertainment, seasonal tourism, etc.), cities that have a strong academic center can benefit from the association between the city�s communication strategy and the local university�s communication strategy, using co-branding in order to gain an advantage and attract more people to the city. For this particular topic, we have chosen the city of Brasov, Romania, a city that has a renowned university, namely Transilvania University of Brasov that nowadays represents the largest comprehensive university in the center of the country. We conducted a research regarding the students perception of the city brand of Brasov in order to find out their opinions about this topic and if we can use them as brand ambassadors in a future city branding strategy and also if the university can be used as a co-brand in this strategy.