Aplikace městského marketingu v praxi: vývoj, očekávání, realita (kritický pohled)

The paper analysis and critically evaluates a practical application of city marketing. It results not only from the Czech, but also foreign experiences. It points out some discrepancies between expectations and a reality of city marketing, which have not been reflected a lot by a city marketing theory. It shows that a city marketing reality is much more unpretentious than theoretical and practical expectations. Existing researches show that nowadays the theory does not offer any generally accepted procedure how to apply knowledge from general (corporate) marketing in conditions of the cities. In principle, in practice individual cities create their own city marketing models which meet their needs and conditions. The forms of these models are affected especially by a relevance of the problems, willingness of interest groups to cooperate, as well as accessibility of external financial resources (subsidiary programmes). In the city marketing praxis we mainly meet the realization of chancy (ad-hoc), nonconceptual, and situational received actions. If there are any coordination and integrative marketing actions, they occur only in the limited measures. Although city marketing still plays more and more important role by solving the city problems, it is not managing and development conception that could be able to substitute or even root existing conceptions or approaches. It is more likely their proper supplement. Possibilities of marketing use in conditions of the cities, if we compare them with a business environment, are more expressively limited and more difficult to realize (e.g. because of many interest and target groups, increasing complexity of the problems and the ways of their solving, problems of marketing activities finance, etc.). Not only because of particularity and severity of a political environment, where the decisions about marketing activities take place, but mainly because the nowadays cities are the result of a long-term evolution, and it is not possible to change in principle easily or in a short-term period the infrastructure, physical and social environment of the city, as well as the structure of the citizens or economy. City marketing is the flexible and innovative tool of development of the cities, which offers them wide possibilities to experiment.