Landscape Conservation: The Strategic Social Marketing Perspective

The purpose of this paper is to examine the applicability of the strategic social marketing concept as a framework for overcoming problems with landscape conservation in tourism destinations. The literature review revealed on one hand that applications of social marketing to this end are scarce and on the other hand, that inclusion of the stakeholders' concept offers the best insight into the problem. In the paper, the proposed approach has been examined on selected cases from Poland. They embraced issues of control over accommodation capacity and aesthetics in small destinations, restoration of the historical appearance of the popular commercial street in the famous mountain resort, and removal and control over outdoor advertising. The analysis of documents, publications and netnography was used for the identification of the stakeholders in the selected cases. Their qualities were established from a descriptive perspective, i.e. showing the actual opinions of the involved parties. It turned out that they differ strongly as power and salience are considered with self-governments and governors at the top, urban movements located near the top while the position of officers responsible for conservation and professional organizations of architects was rather weak. The qualitative content analysis also enabled assumptions concerning the values that may be the subject of exchange in social marketing campaigns. The majority of the arguments used by the stakeholders is economically motivated but an ideological component can be also discerned. The study is exploratory and implementation of strategic social marketing for particular cases of landscape conservation will need case specific research and ideas generation. Its contribution is in showing that strategic social marketing together with the stakeholders concept offer a useful framework for the analysis and amendment of wicked cases of landscape conservation. It also supports claims that the ethnographic research tradition may be very useful in the development of social marketing strategies and campaigns.