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

Abstract

Attempts to apply marketing theory and principles to place have become a legitimate area of academic and ‘real world’ practice. However, place marketing does not typically incorporate all elements of the traditional 7 Ps, focusing far too often on just one of these – promotion. Besides this rather myopic approach, place marketing suffers from an overly strategic view of the world that ignores the meaning and lived experience of places to individuals, especially residents. The purpose of this article is twofold – first, we investigate the impact of litter on place attitudes. Litter is a common, but negative, element of place, which is intimately connected to the lived experience of a place but typically far removed from the positive promotional activity favoured by place marketing efforts and the study thereof. In this sense, the article reframes place marketing from a strategic to a micro-marketing endeavour. We found that exposing respondents to litter significantly lowers their place attitudes. Our second contribution is to demonstrate the relevance of classic marketing research approaches, such as attitudinal measures, to investigate litter and its impact on place evaluations, through quasi-experimental design (with 662 respondents). Through this, we extend the range of theory and method applied in place marketing – away from controllable promotional endeavours investigated through case-studies to a more holistic and robust interpretation of place marketing, which has a measurable impact upon the places where people live and visit.

Keywords:

• place marketing
• place branding
• brand attitude
• litter
• semantic differentials
• quasi-experiment

Notes

¹ How satisfied are you with this block as a place to live? Comparing your block to other blocks in the area, is your block a better place to live, a worse place to live or about the same? In the past two years, have conditions on your block gotten worse, stayed about the same or improved? In the next two years, do you feel conditions on your block will get worse, stay about the same or improve?)

² As we have followed standard practice for positioning the semantic differentials (from positive to negative), lower scores are indicative of higher attitudes.

³ As we have followed standard practice for positioning the semantic differentials (from positive to negative), lower scores are indicative of higher attitudes.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Cathy Parker

Cathy Parker is Professor of Marketing and Retail at Manchester Metropolitan University Business School and Visiting Professor of Place Management at the Institute of Regional Development, University of Tasmania. She is chair of the Institute of Place Management and editor-in-chief of the Journal of Place Management. She has published in many peer-reviewed academic journals, including European Journal of Marketing, Journal of Business Research and Journal of Marketing Management.

Stuart Roper

Stuart Roper has been Professor of Marketing at Bradford University School of Management since May 2014. Prior to this he spent nearly 10 years at Manchester Business School. His latest book Corporate Reputation, Brand and Communication (published by Pearson) deals with contemporary issues, difficulties and opportunities in managing brands and corporate reputation in the twenty-first century. Stuart’s work is also published in journals such as the Journal of Business Research, Psychology and Marketing, European Journal of Marketing, Journal of Marketing Management, Journal of Consumer Behaviour, Equal Opportunities International and Corporate Reputation Review amongst others, and focuses on many aspects of brands and branding. Stuart is the chair of the UK Academy of Marketing’s special interest group in Branding, Identity and Corporate Reputation. He has appeared in media in the UK and around the world discussing contemporary issues in branding, marketing and issues of corporate reputation. Examples include BBC TV and Radio, TVNZ, The Sunday Times, Daily Telegraph, The Guardian, Marketing Magazine, and on news related websites around the world.

Dominic Medway

Dominic Medway is Professor of Marketing at Manchester Business School. His research focuses on issues of space and place in all aspects of marketing activity, reflecting an academic training in geography. He has extensively published in variety of leading journals, including Environment & Planning A, Tourism Management, European Journal of Marketing and Marketing Theory.