Theoretical Concept and Definition of City Marketing

Abstract

Why do some cities get more investments than others taking into account their equal locality, capital, and potential? City marketing can be a direct answer to that. Selling cities as a product, building their brand and reputation, making them attractive in the "urban market" for investors, partners, current and prospective residents… all of these bring us to the idea of cities' interests' promotion. In this article author frames the theoretical concept of city marketing through literature analysis and creates an operational definition in the framework of the thesis "Strategic City Marketing in Ukrainian Local Governments: Analysis of Current and Perspective Realization". In the process of analysis, it was observed, that studied definitions form two groups: competition-oriented and customer-oriented. The task was to use features of both in the operational definition.