An investigation into digital place marketing practices of selected South African local municipalities and communities
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Date
2018-04
Authors
De Ridder, Thomas
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
University of the Free State
Abstract
Places such as town or city municipalities and communities should market themselves to
attract and retain skilled middle and higher income residents, businesses, investors and
tourists because these typical place marketing target audiences are key role players in
local economic development. However, as the world economy becomes increasingly
globalised, these target audiences are more mobile than ever and therefore places
compete directly with each other to attract and retain them. It is therefore increasingly
important for places to deliberately engage in place marketing, and to do so efficiently.
Modern place marketing practices necessitate the use of digital marketing channels
because these are the media channels most used by the desired target audiences, as
opposed to traditional media for information searches to make place selection choices.
Today, the most efficient place marketing channels are websites, blogs, social media,
online review and directory sites, wikis and mobile apps.
The research hypothesis for this study is that South African municipalities and typical
stakeholder groups within those municipal areas that naturally assume the role of
marketing of their towns or areas do not make proper use of digital place marketing
practices. Twenty South African municipal areas (local municipalities and their main
towns) were selected as case studies to test this hypothesis. The actual digital place
marketing activities of these municipalities or towns were compared to digital place
marketing best practice, using evaluative web content analysis research methods. This
entailed searching the internet and social media for the places’ web and social media
presence and digital marketing practices and to assess the quality thereof. Actual digital
marketing practices of the case study places were measured against a list of criteria using
a rating scale devised by the author. This enabled the comparison of actual practice
against ideal digital marketing strategies as identified during the literature research part
of the dissertation. The results clearly show that digital place marketing practices are
poorly adopted by the case study places.
Description
Keywords
Place marketing, Place branding, Investment attraction, Digital marketing, Digital place marketing, Online place marketing, Small town, Municipal marketing, City marketing, City banding, Web content analysis, Dissertation (M.U.R.P. (Urban and Regional Planning))--University of the Free State, 2018