Towards a Digitalization of Place Marketing: The Digital Portrait of the Territory (DPT), a New Digital Territorial Diagnosis Tool

Abstract:

All territories around the world aspire to be attractive and competitive. To achieve this, they are now discovering the benefits of place marketing and the effectiveness of its tools. Nevertheless, the majority of practitioners and academics are struggling to carry out their territorial diagnosis at the digital level, a sphere that has become the main field of territorial competition. The cause of this difficulty lies in the lack of a territorial diagnostic tool adapted to the digital world.

The objective of this paper is to propose a new digital territorial diagnosis tool. Named the (DPT), the digital portrait of the territory, will serve as a methodological tool for place- marketers to carry out the diagnosis of the digital presence of their territories.

After a literature review of the main models of territorial diagnosis, we propose our model of place audit at the digital level (DPT) based on four concepts: the identity portrait of the territory, the AI Persona, the digital touch point place and the human portrait. To conclude with a discussion of the managerial implications and academic perspectives of our conceptual research.