City Marketing: Cronological Definitions

“City marketing” has become an interesting research issues for decades and attracted many scholars from various fields of studies (Management, Geography, Urban Planning, communication to mention some) leading to deep and substantial publications. Definition of city marketing have evolved over time, and came up with a variety of terms such as place marketing and city branding. Although there are differences or even debate on the terms, but some suggest that both terms have the same meaning or have a common understanding with the “city marketing”. There are many definitions emerging since 1982 until today. However, this paper analyses it not as a group of science but analysing the definitions of city marketing by decades, namely year 1982 to 1999, 2000 to 2008 and 2008-to the present. Besides the purpose of this paper is also to analyze the definition of city marketing in both similarities and differences.Results: This paper shows that some scholars illustrate a city as a product. But marketing is very much different. Understanding the development of traditional thinking, problems and solutions as well as application of marketing in a city, promoting to the image of the city leading to the improvement of the socioeconomic becomes widely popular. It contains functions of marketing management which are more measurable, clearer and pay attention to the interests of all stakeholders (residents, investors and visitors).