THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN PLACE MARKETING AND COUNTRY RANK CITIES

Abstract

The study aims to flnd out whether cities in Hungary today use place marketing and
whether this is related to their success. City marketing started to be investigated in the
1980s, with the first studies in Hungary appearing in the mid-1990s. The discipline is all
about making a locality attractive to potential investors, residents, and tourists. In our
country, this marketing tool is little known among municipalities, therefore we tried toflnd
outwhether the county-rank cities arefamiliarwith this developmenttool. Fór thispurpose,
we conducted a document analysis when we investigated the developmentstrategies ofthe
cities. We assumed that the larger Hungárián towns and cities reached a stage of
development when a separate, dedicated marketing strategy has beenformulated. We alsó
expected that ifthey do nőt have a speciflc strategy, they have other documents dealing
with marketing issues. Database analysis and a questionnaire survey were alsó conducted
to get to know the practice of marketing at the municipal level. We summarised these
results to conclude that most cities belonging to this category do nőt currently consciously
use place marketing. Cities that have a definite marketing strategy are mostly using social
média platforms to reach dijferent targetgroups. Mostofthem are alsó aware ofthe three
targeted segments (investors, tourists, residents) of place marketing. Fór municipalities
without a strategy, the main reason is the lack ofavailable resources.