Marketing Tools in the Process of Building the Relationship between the Cultural Institutions and Citizens of the City Divided by the Border

Abstract:

The concept of relationship on cross-border cooperation in sphere of culture has been recognised as very important in global strategic documents of European Union for more than a two decades. It is also increasingly reflected in the cultural polices of particular states, and-very importantly-cultural managers who are responsible for shaping the cultural offer in euroregions are becoming more interested in this concept. Despite the increasing attention being paid to this topic among both practitioners and theoreticians of management, in none of these documents or other works can we find content that is directly related to the cities divided by the border. This gap was the direct impulse for taking up research in this field. Based on in-depth interviews carried out with fifty experts from the Polish and Czech side of the city divided by the border (Cieszyn PL - Czech Cieszyn CZ) the possibilities of marketing tools in the process of building the relationship between the cultural institutions and citizens of the city divided by the border were recognized. The conducted research shows that Polish and Czech managers of cultural institutions differ in terms of the key tools of the marketing. In their opinion they should have a primary application at the stage of establishing and strengthening relationship, connecting cultural institutions with Polish and Czech citizens of the city divided by the border. According to Polish experts the key tool for building relationships (establishing and strengthening relationship) is marketing communication, whereas in the opinion of Czech respondents these will be activities related to shaping the product.