The peculiar nature of place marketing according to an inductional approach

Abstract

The declared aim of inductional marketing is the total involvement of the customer, which leads directly, due to the satisfaction experienced, to the act of purchasing. According to this approach, even when the products to be promoted are ‘local territorial systems’ (that is, territories which share social and economic characteristics), it is important to create consumers (read, ‘users’ of these systems) before products themselves (acting to modify the offer of these systems). In view of this renewed concept of marketing, place marketing is then characterized by considering not only the strategic resources that are the heritage of a territorial identity, that is a vocation of a system, but also the image perceived by potential users of that local territorial system.
It may prove to be an institutional tool suitable for creating a framing which guides the actions of firms and other strategic actors, allowing them to develop strategic decisions in a context that influences the meaning given to their development policies, suggesting ways to interpret and decode problems and uncertainties, integrating resources and core competences with the expectancies and perceptions embedded in particular
contexts of users’ experience.