ABSTRACT
Place marketing, of which city marketing is by far the most significant component, has generated a massive literature. Between 1990 and 1994, five major books were published (Ashworth and Voogd 1990; Kearns and Philo 1993; Kotler et al. 1993; Gold and Ward 1994; Smyth 1994) containing 242, 560, 248, 633 and 164 references, respectively. Recently, a selective bibliography of city marketing literature consisting of over 280 references was issued (Millington et al. 1997). Most of this literature is also very recent. Students of citation will not be surprised to learn that a substantial proportion of this literature is mutually reinforcing but, while city marketing cannot claim to be a discipline in its own right, it is an area of study within which distinctive ‘schools’ have emerged. In broad terms, the literature divides into three relatively separate groups.
