Place Marketing. Cluj-Napoca City Case Study

Recently, places have become like businesses. Forces such as globalization and the new 21st century technology lead to the mobility of the resources. In this newly created situation places found themselves in a position of competing with each other. In order to face this competition places incorporate new concepts such as “marketing” into their development strategies. Concepts such as ‘place competition’, ‘distinguish and competitive advantages of the place’, ‘the brand of the place’ and ‘co-branding’ are key aspects discussed in this paper regarding the case of Cluj-Napoca. In this study we focus on elaborating this key aspects of place marketing from the citizens’ perception. We asked the citizens about their perception concerning: the most representative city brands, the importance of these brands in promoting the city’s image, the differences between their city and others and their perception towards the existence of place competition.