Marketing a municipality as a place : a study of three municipalities in the north of Sweden

The purpose of this thesis was to create a deeper understanding regarding the importance of place marketing for municipalities in Sweden and how they apply it when trying to establish a economical growth of the amount of tourists and businesses within the municipality. In order to achieve this purpose a case study was performed where respondents from three municipalities in the north of Sweden were interviewed. The answers were compared to theories regarding the subject place marketing in order to find similarities and differences. The results from the case study show that municipalities consider neighboring municipalities as partners rather than competitors. Another result from the study is that slogans are commonly used when trying to establish a positive image about the municipality. Furthermore, municipalities find evaluating the marketing effectiveness difficult and costly: they have a limited budget for marketing as they rather spend money to improve living conditions for their residents.Validerat; 20101217 (root