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Marketing is one of the key pillars of the successful management of an enterprise. For the transition economies of Central and Eastern Europe, this had previously been a neglected aspect. The aim of this paper is to assess the development of marketing practice in the firms of one of those economies, the Czech Republic, between 1999 and 2003. It analyses the implementation of the Internet as amarketing tool and how Czech enterprises approach marketing and marketing strategy. With the accession of the Czech Republic and other formerly communist countries to the European Union in 2004, the importance of marketing to such firms cannot be overstated, if the benefits of the enlarged marketplace are to be realised fully.

The purpose of this paper is to report on a special session entitled “Place branding: Are we wasting our time?”, held at the American Marketing Association’s Summer Marketing Educators’ conference in 2014.

The report details the outcome of an Oxford-style debate with two opposing teams of two persons – one team supporting and one team opposing the motion. The opening speaker of each team had 10 minutes to put their case across, and the closing speaker had 8 minutes. Teams took to the stand alternately, matching up against each other’s arguments.

The outcome of the debate points towards a need for place brands to develop as more inclusive and organic entities, in which case it may be best for place practitioners to avoid creating and imposing a place brand and instead help shape it from the views of stakeholder constituencies. This shifts the notion of place branding towards an activity centred on “curation”.

The use of a competitive debating format as a means for exploring academic ideas and concepts in the place management field.

The issue of retailing in rural areas has received relatively little attention in recent years. This article considers retail businesses in a remote, rural area, the Uist chain in the Western Isles of Scotland. Drawing on the marketing and retail strategy literatures, a “funnical” model of rural retail strategies is developed, and examples of independent retail businesses that have adopted both market‐led and product‐led strategies are posited. These have ranged from a situation of “strategic stasis” within some retail organisations, where more “extensive” methods of running retail outlets have been adopted, through to various new development strategies. Overall, it is evident that retailers may mix strategic directions for their business within the specific geographic context that they are located. This appears to contrast with Jussila et.al. (1992: 192), who imply that their strategic alternatives are mutually exclusive and that the individual strategies are “spatially bound”. In the light of these findings, the article considers the implications presented for retailers in other rural areas of the UK.

This paper aims to consider the role of demarketing in the specific context of the marketing of places, and to introduce a typology of place demarketing and related place marketing activity.

Following a review of the extant literature on place marketing and branding, place image and demarketing, the paper outlines a number of different types of place demarketing and more unusual place marketing strategies, with examples of each.

The marketing of places has grown in scale and importance, both as a practice and as an area of academic research, as places have had to become more entrepreneurial in an ever‐increasing competitive environment. Places are increasingly conceptualised as brands to be marketed, and a key emphasis of such activity is the creation of an attractive place image and/or the dilution of negative place images. This is reinforced in the academic literature. Counter to this “conventional wisdom”, this article conceptualises various types of place demarketing activity and related place marketing activities; namely “passive place demarketing”, “informational place demarketing”, “crisis place demarketing”, and also “perverse place marketing” and “dark place marketing”.

This paper provides a unique counter to the “conventional wisdom” of place marketing by introducing the concept of place demarketing and perverse and dark place marketing which more explicitly accentuate the negative, rather than accentuating the positive which is the norm in this marketing context. A typology of such activities is introduced and the implications for place brands are considered.

This article considers the implications of the introduction of legislation enabling the creation of the US concept of business improvement districts (BIDs) into the UK. Based on the US experience, it can be argued that local networks of small and medium‐sized retailers can benefit from establishing a BID in their immediate locale. A number of critical success factors for such BIDs are identified. These include strong leadership, a genuine desire for change, clarity of objectives and support from the local authority. The article concludes with a discussion of the advantages (and potential problem areas) of such localised SME retailer‐led BIDs.

In the light of recent changes in the international environment, the purpose of this paper is to consider whether the drivers of, and impediments to, retail internationalisation and the business strategy adopted have also changed.

Interviews were conducted with 12 UK and US retailers. These exploratory data were combined with a review of the literature to explore changes in the drivers and impediments of retail internationalisation.

Findings of this study suggest that, while a variety of factors drive retail internationalisation, profit growth is the most dominant motivator. In terms of impediments to foreign expansion, domestic market conditions were a barrier to the initiation of foreign expansion, whilst the regulatory environment and previous experiences presented obstacles in the process of internationalisation. Interviewees also expressed a desire for increased standardisation, while acknowledging the need for a substantial degree of adaptation in response to cultural differences.

The research findings are limited in terms of their generalisability.

Much of the existing research into retail internationalisation was conducted in the 1990s. Given the substantial changes that have occurred over the past 15 years, the value of this paper lies in the updating of knowledge.

The aim of this paper is to offer a discursive perspective on luxury brand consumption.

Discourse analysis is used to examine how consumers construct their luxury brand consumption amidst countervailing cultural discourses in the market (Thompson and Haytko). Consumer discourse is generated through in‐depth, semi‐structured interviews.

In the context of countervailing discourses that challenge the notion of luxury (e.g. “masstige”, “chav” and “bling”), respondents construct an ostensibly distinct and stable version of luxury expressing its subjective, experiential, moral and artistic constructs. Analysis demonstrates how these four themes operate at a linguistic‐textual level to delineate important cultural categories and boundaries around luxury. Luxury brand discourse operates strategic juxtapositions between normatively positive (ideal) and normatively negative (problematic) categories, which are paradoxically interdependent.

A qualitative study of high‐income residents from an affluent UK region is reported upon. The study is exploratory, focussing on interrelations between discourse, content and context. This invites future studies to consider contextual elements of luxury branding.

The paper proposes a new way of thinking about luxury brands as a socially constructed concept. The paper concludes by arguing that luxury brand management necessitates a deeper appreciation of the mechanics of consumers' luxury discourses.

The purpose of the paper is to evaluate the development, role and management of quarters in UK cities.

A case study based on Manchester's Northern Quarter, using secondary documentary materials and semi‐structured interviews with urban managers and residents of the Quarter.

The emergence of the Northern Quarter is a relatively recent phenomenon, with small scale cultural industries and artists moving into take advantage of cheap property following the collapse of the area's economic base in the 1970s. Its branding was a development of the 1990s, set within the wider context of the marketing of the city as a whole. The area has regenerated, but its idiosyncratic character is continuously under pressure from developers and the demands of corporate retailing/leisure, from which it needs to be protected as far as possible. It is not an appropriate area for a business improvement district, but rather needs treating as an eco‐system and allowed to develop under its own momentum.

This is a single case study, which would merit duplication in other cities.

The paper suggests that “real” quarters are essentially organic in their origins, and cannot be planned or managed in a top‐down way. The serial replication of artificial quarters will not assist the differentiation of localities in increasingly competitive place markets.

The paper will be of interest to students and practitioners of urban place management.