Marketing: A new organising principle for local government?

A local government practitioner and a marketing academic consider the claim s for marketing as a new organising principle for local government. They sc rutinise the most frequent objections to the concept of marketing in this c ontext and demonstrate that these have little or no force. This is especial ly tore concerning the emerging paradigms of relationship marketing and Web ster's development of the marketing concept. The authors conclude that a ma rketing philosophy underlies much of the new approach to local government s ervice provision, and set out some of the characteristics which local gover nment marketing needs to have.