City Marketing: The Past, the Present and Some Unresolved Issues

Abstract

AbstractFor several decades now, cities all over the world have been applying marketing techniques and increasingly adopting a marketing philosophy to meet their operational and strategic goals. City marketing has grown into an established field of research and an academic subdiscipline. This article begins with a description of the three main historical episodes of city marketing development and then assesses its current state, suggesting that cities have moved into a fourth episode, which centres on the application of city branding. Despite the accumulated experience, however, many issues surrounding the application of city marketing remain in need of further theoretical development and practical clarification. The last part of this article therefore seeks to further the discussion about the effects of city marketing, seeking to elicit the latent potential that city marketing might still hold for the future prospects of cities.