ARTICLE | Back to basics in the marketing of place: the impact of litter upon place attitudes

SUMMARY

Authors: Cathy PARKER et al. (2015)

Attempts to apply marketing theory and principles to territory have become a legitimate area of academic and "real world" practice. However, territorial marketing generally fails to incorporate all the elements of the traditional 7 Ps, focusing far too much on the following aspects, often for a single reason - promotion. In addition to this form of "myopia", territory suffers from an overly strategic view of the world that ignores the importance of the lived experience of places for individuals, particularly residents. The aim of this article is twofold - firstly, we investigate the impact of litter on attitudes to place. Litter is an element of territories that is intimately linked to the lived experience of a place, but generally far removed from promotional activity and territorial marketing efforts and study. In this sense, the article refuses to pit strategic marketing against a micro-marketing effort. We found that exposing respondents to waste significantly lowers their attitude to place. Our second contribution is to demonstrate the relevance of classical marketing research approaches, such as attitude measurement, to study waste and its impact on place evaluations, through a quasi-experimental design (662 respondents). Thanks to this, we extend the scope of theory and method applied to territorial marketing - away from controllable promotional efforts that have been the subject of case studies in order to achieve greater efficiency in their implementation - to a holistic and robust interpretation of territorial marketing, which has a measurable impact on the places where people live and visit.

Keywords: brand attitude, waste, semantic differences, territorial branding, territorial marketing, perceptions, quality of life

Illustration : Pixabay - © RitaE