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Branding InformationNation Stigmatisation
and Place Marketing - The Place
by:
Sam Vaknin
IV. The Place
Some countries are geographically disadvantaged. Recent studies have incontestable
how being inland
or having a tropical climate carry a hefty cost tag in terms of reduced economic growth. These unfavorable circumstances can be represented
as "natural discounts" to a country's price.
What can be done to overcome such negative factor endowments?
In classical microeconomics, the element of "place" in the marketing plan used to refer to the locus of delivery of the product or service. Well into the Nineteenth century, the "place" was identical to the region wherever
the product was factory-made
or the service rendered. In else words, textiles weaved in Bharat were seldom
oversubscribed in Britain. American accountants were unlikely to practice in Russia. Distribution was a local affair and networks of dissemination and marketing were geographically confined.
A host of historical and technological developments drastically altered the scene and worn
the straitjacket of geography.
The violent disintegration of the old system of political science
alliances led to the formation of massive, multiplayer mercantilism
blocs inside
which and among which the movement of goods and, increasingly, services is friction-free.
The immense increase in the world's population - matched by the exponential rise in buying power - created a worldwide marketplace of new wealth and a corresponding hunger for goods and services. The triumph of liberal laissez-faire economy combined
this beneficial effect.
The advent of mass media, mass transport, and mass communications reduced group action
cost and barriers to entry. The earth shrank to become a veritable "global village".
The value of psychological feature
(processed information) has fast up
to surpass that of classical (physical) goods and services. Information has several of the properties of a public nice (for instance, nonrivalry) - coupled with all the incentives of a private nice (e.g., profit-making).
Thus, the really nature of distribution had been irrevocably changed. The distribution channel, the path from producer to user
(in our case, from country to foreign capitalist
or tourist, for example) is less heavy-laden by topography than it used to be.
Even the poorest, most remote, landlocked, arid, and deprived country can nowadays leverage air flight, the Internet, television, cell phones, and else miracles of technology to promote itself and its unique offerings (knowledge, plant and animal species, scenery, history, minerals, cheap and educated manpower, cuisine, textiles, software, and so on).
The key to success is in a mix of several direct and indirect marketing. Nowadays, countries can (and do) appeal directly to consumers (ads targeted at tourists or road shows aimed at investors). They present themselves and what they have to offer, circumventing brokers and agents of all kinds (disintermediation). Still, they should not fail to cultivate much traditional marketing channels such as investment banks, travel agents, many-sided organizations, or trade associations.
With many an of the physical obstacles to marketing removed in the last few decades, with the really idea of "place" rendered obsolete, promotion emerged as the most critical facet of nation stigmatisation
and place marketing.
Just about the Author
Sam Vaknin ( http://samvak.tripod.com ) is the author of Malignant Self Love - Egoism Revisited and After the Rain - How the West Lost the East. He served as a editorialist for Central Europe Review, PopMatters, and eBookWeb , and Bellaonline, and as a United Press International (UPI) Senior Business Correspondent. He is the the editor of mental health and Central East Europe categories in The Open Directory and Suite101.
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