Content Analysis of Public Branding Strategies: Uniqueness and Isomorphism in Facebook Posts of Italian Museums

Public branding strategies can help create a strong identity for a public institution, fostering trust among potentially increasing conscious tourism. This research focuses on understanding the corporate branding strategies, i.e., uniqueness or isomorphism, enacted by Italian public museum by analyzing the content of official Facebook posts. Implementing a topic modelling analysis of the content of posts published over six months shows that generally museums pursue isomorphic branding strategies especially in connection to service-related themes, but uniqueness of branding strategies emerges especially in connection to experiences and knowledge themes for some museums. These results enrich public branding literature as well as provide relevant results for public managers and tourism managers.