Territorial marketing: restrictions on application in Russia

The article investigates the restrictions to apply marketing concept at the territorial level of the domestic economy. The conceptual basis of the territorial marketing, its peculiarities and perspectives for its improvement in Russia have been considered. The methodology is based on the use of the systems, problem and SWOT-analysis, which have revealed that one of the strengths of territorial marketing in Russia includes the acknowledgement to apply the territorial marketing at the national (federal) level and that there is a tendency to strengthening of inter-regional competition. Weaknesses of Russian territorial marketing are the directive and formal attitude, as well as the prevalence of regulatory mechanisms in the operation areas. Threats of the territorial marketing in Russia are primarily related to the negative external economic situation caused by the imposed sanctions. The results of the study have shown that Russian economy is characterized by significant difficulties in practical implementation of the marketing concept. These challenges are related to the standardization of regional proposals (roughly the same quality of infrastructure), the predominance of regulatory mechanisms in the process of main regional byproducts pricing, unreasonable restriction of the consumer target groups in regional megaproduct, and the exclusion of a private sector from the process of a region promotion. An advanced model of territorial marketing has been suggested according to the revealed restrictions in Russia. The obtained results are planned to be used in the subsequent work out of the applied territorial marketing concept that will include a package of measures to enhance socio- economic processes in regions, to produce a positive image of a region and to create favorable conditions for sustainable regional development.