Today's headlines report cities going bankrupt, states running large deficits, and nations stuck in high debt and stagnation. Philip Kotler, Donald Haider, and Irving Rein argue that thousands of "places" -- cities, states, and nations -- are in crisis, and can no longer rely on national industrial policies, such as federal matching funds, as a promise of jobs and protection. When trouble strikes, places resort to various palliatives such as chasing grants from state or federal sources, bidding for smokestack industries, or building convention centers and exotic attractions. The authors show instead that places must, like any market-driven business, become attractive "products" by improving their industrial base and communicating their special qualities more effectively to their target markets. From studies of cities and nations throughout the world, Kotler, Haider, and Rein offer a systematic analysis of why so many places have fallen on hard times, and make recommendations on what can be done to revitalize a place's economy. They show how "place wars" -- battles for Japanese factories, government projects, Olympic Games, baseball team franchises, convention business, and other economic prizes -- are often misguided and end in wasted money and effort. The hidden key to vigorous economic development, the authors argue, is strategic marketing of places by rebuilding infrastructure, creating a skilled labor force, stimulating local business entrepreneurship and expansion, developing strong public/private partnerships, identifying and attracting "place compatible" companies and industries, creating distinctive local attractions, building a service-friendly culture, and promoting these advantages effectively. Strategic marketing of places requires a deep understanding of how "place buyers" -- tourists, new residents, factories, corporate headquarters, investors -- make their place decisions. With this understanding, "place sellers" -- economic development agencies, tourist promotion agencies, mayor's offices -- can take the necessary steps to compete aggressively for place buyers. This straightforward guide for effectively marketing places will be the framework for economic development in the 1990s and beyond.

Tourism is well established as an important part of the new service economy, and the rewards it offers have stimulated intense competition in the tourism industry. Many destinations compete to attract potential tourists, each place having to work hard to distinguish itself from rivals offering similar or alternative attractions. This book, originally published in 1990, explores how destinations invest increasing amounts of time and money into developing and promoting their 'products'. The contributors, from both academic institutes and the tourism industry, provide a multidisciplinary and professional analysis of what can be done to sell tourism places. Using both theoretical and empirical approaches, they give examples from different areas of the industry and evaluate different strategies a destination can adopt for maintaining and increasing its market share. All the contributors emphasize that selling tourism places must be a dynamic activity in which the place products are constantly monitored, so that they can be revitalized, repositioned, or renewed in the market context.

This book integrates new thinking on the image, marketing, and branding of places at all levels, from town squares to cities and countries, and of the products and peoples associated with them, thereby bridging the ‘country’ and ‘place’ silos in place-related research and practice. Insightful contributions from top scholars reflect fresh theorizing and provide a critical appraisal of conventional wisdom by juxtaposing intriguing contexts, questioning commonplace practices, and challenging methodologies and theoretical assumptions.

Selling Places explores the fascinating development of the place marketing and promotion over the last 150 years, drawing on examples from Northern America, Britain and continental Europe. The processes involved and the promotional imagery employed are meticulously presented and richly illustrated.

Flagships are the physical apogee of consumerism, places where brand experiences are most defined and interactions with consumers are highly refined. This book marks the first comprehensive study of the concept of the flagship, bringing together a range of scholarly insights from the field, covering issues such as consumerism, areas of consumption and experimental marketing theory and practise. The ways in which flagship projects communicate brand values, both externally and internally, form an important part of this book, and provide new perspectives on late twentieth century commercial and cultural policy and practice. Kent and Brown offer a truly interdisciplinary approach to the concept, offering a variety of perspectives on the debates surrounding flagship function and its role as a place of consumption. Chapters focus on the development of prestigious stores, hotels and arts and cultural centres, as showcases for branded experiences and products and as demonstrations of commercial and public policy. Cases and examples include The Eden Project in the UK, automotive showrooms in Germany, hotels in Dubai and Las Vegas, and Vienna's cultural quarter. Theoretical discussion explores the tensions between costs and profitability, conspicuous consumption and the sustainability of iconic forms. The book enables readers to explore the flagship concept from different perspectives, and while a marketing approach predominates, it provides a disciplinary challenge which will open up new ways of understanding the concept.

Growing competition between countries and cities over attracting infrastructure, investment, tourists, capital and national and international status mean that today, a negative image is more harmful than ever. Whatever the cause of the negative image, places perceived as dangerous, frightening, or boring are at a distinct disadvantage. Many decision makers and marketers stand by helplessly, frustrated by their knowledge that in most cases, their city's negative image is not based on well-grounded facts. Given that stereotypes are not easily changed or dismissed, the challenge facing these decision makers is great. Analyses of many case studies show interesting examples of places that tried to change a negative image into a positive one, in order to bringing back tourists, investors and residents. Although a great deal of knowledge about crisis communications has accumulated in recent years, very little has been written about strategies to improve places' negative images. The aim of "Media Strategies for Marketing Places in Crisis" is to discuss the various dimensions of an image crisis and different strategies to overcome it, both in practice and theory. "Media Strategies for Marketing Places in Crisis" is based on the careful analysis of dozens of case studies, advertisements, public relations campaigns, press releases, academic articles, news articles, and the websites of cities, countries and tourist destinations.

Through innovative use of little used archival material, Rothenberg finds that the relevant economic magnitudes - farm commodity prices, wages for day and monthly farm labor, and the determinants of rural wealth holding - behaved as if they had been formed in a market. This ground breaking discovery reveals how an agricultural economy that lacked both an important export staple and technological change could experience market-led growth. To understand this impressive economic development, Rothenberg discusses a number of provocative questions.