With industrial restructuring and growing competition among places throughout the world, many countries including Korea are becoming highly dependent on place marketing as their development strategy. Previous discussions on place marketing strategy ma ...
With industrial restructuring and growing competition among places throughout the world, many countries including Korea are becoming highly dependent on place marketing as their development strategy. Previous discussions on place marketing strategy maintain that the strategy should be performed on the basis of the unique placeness of each place. Not all places, however, have placeness that can be used for the place marketing strategy and in reality there are several cases of success in place marketing by introducing elements irrelevant to the places. In this context, this study aims to analyze previous
debates on place and place marketing, and to investigate the possibility of creating placeness. In addition, it selected as case places the city of Ashland and the city of Jacksonville in the state of Oregon, USA and Tongyeong-si in Korea and examined how the art festival, one of major means of place marketing, can be used in intentional formation of placeness.
The results of this study are summarized as follows:
1. Placeness, or a sense of place, is the perceived characteristic of a place, which is formed through the meaning contest of place assets. Place assets are elements of a place that can be used for place marketing. The agents of place marketing develop place assets, commercialize them into placeness, and promote them to potential customers. These activities vitalize the place by attracting people and capitals into the locality. Because marketing is to develop commodities in response to customers' needs, place marketing strategy has the possibility of modifying or creating placeness as a product.
2. According to existing discussions on place and placeness, placeness is static and shaped by visibility and time (repetitive experiences) for a long period. It is possible, however, to create placeness by intentionally combining visibility and time (experience) with the process of place marketing. Visibility can be created by holding festivals, building structures related with the festivals and maintaining facilities of the cities, and experience can be achieved by attending the festivals, structured and institutional education system, direct support of festivals from volunteer services and sponsor groups, etc.
3. In terms of place marketing, place assets can be classified into material,
environmental, social and cultural, political and institutional, symbolic, locational, potential, and relative-possibility assets. Among these assets, potential assets and relative-possibility assets can be used in creating placeness.
4. The process of place marketing through the intentional formation of placeness consists of place strategy and marketing strategy. Place strategy is composed of market audit and place audit, while marketing strategy is a stage of creating new placeness or modifying existing placeness by introducing place assets through internal and external processes. The agents of place marketing introduce and promote new place assets in the place through the place and marketing strategy and, by doing so, create placeness.
5. Art festivals have great possibilities of placeness creation because of the high publicness and easy transplantability of art. Moreover, operating agents of art festivals are cultural NPOs (non-profit organizations), consisting of professional art management groups and artist groups.
6. This case study examined the process of creating placeness by importing
relative-possibility assets or potential assets in the form of art festivals in the case cities. Ashland has introduced the Shakespeare Festival in the region for the first time in western America, enjoying the advantage of starting in advance, while Jacksonville has combined the Britt Music Festival with its own assets as a historic gold-mining town. On the other hand, Tongyeong has used 'Yun I-Sang', a world-famous composer, as a potential asset. The detailed degrees and means of creating placeness depend on the features of introduced place assets and interaction between the introduced place assets and existing placeness. In conclusion, as places are regarded as goods with the introduction of place marketing strategy, the paradigm of perceiving places and placeness has changed, which makes it possible to make placeness intentionally. In the process of place strategy and marketing strategy, the agents of place marketing introduce place assets, which are pertinent to their
places, combine them with the structure of visibility and experience, and finally create or modify placeness. The detailed process of creating placeness varies according to the situation of each place. On the other side, the possibility of placeness creation in place marketing can be utilized as a means of regional development. Considering the growing demand and supply of culture in the 21st century, art festival can be a proper means of placeness creation and the role of cultural NPOs with professional ability is growing more important.
The implications of this study are as follows:
1. The possibility of placeness creation can be positively used as a means of regional development. This means that places with few weak place assets or negative placeness can import place assets as a means of place marketing. In this case, internal and external processes should interact with each other so that the imported place assets take root into the region.
2. In case of performing place marketing strategy through the introduction of art
festivals, it is necessary to intensify the specialty and capacity of cultural NPOs. What is more, placeness may be created promptly if introduced art is artistically valuable or unique.
3. Because the roles of leaders are very important in introducing place assets in a place intentionally, creative environment should be prepared so that their ideas are freely accepted.
4. To root a festival or other place assets imported into the community, it is necessary to institutionalize continuous education and participation in place assets. Continuous education and participation can make both the local residents and visitors understand and learn the festival more and accept the festival as placeness of the place.