Which destination brands among nation, city, and event brands benefit from hosting mega-events? Before-after comparison of three destination brands for the PyeongChang Winter Olympics

This research empirically examined concurrent brand effects in a multistep longitudinal study using multiple brand equity values as measurements. By choosing the 2018 PyeongChang Winter Olympics as the study context, this study compared the brand equity of PyeongChang, South Korea, and the Olympic Games at three different time points. The findings showed significant variance in the brand effect for PyeongChang at the different time points, signifying that the city brand had the largest utility of mega-events. Although PyeongChang scored the lowest for all aspects of brand equity compared with the other two brands, it was the only brand that showed an increase in all brand equity over time.