NATURAL VALUES AS A BASIS FOR POSITIONING OF POLISH CITIES AND REGIONS

Increasingly nowadays the image of brand is more important than the product’s actual characteristics. Therefore, one of the most challenging tasks for contemporary brands is to become deeply embedded in the awareness of the marketing activities recipients. This situa-tion takes also place in the case of the cities and regions that compete with each other in or-der to attract tourists, new citizens, students and investors. Territorial units may choose, among other things, from such distinctive characteristics (so-called unique selling proposi-tion) as ecology and place-specific natural values. With regard to the above, the aim of this paper is to analyse the extent to which such attributes have been used in positioning of Polish territorial units. For that reason, the paper mentions symbols and promotional slogans of selected cities and all provinces (because for destinations the most essential positioning elements are: the place names, symbols and slogans). Furthermore, it refers also to the na-ture of positioning, as well as to the features and determinants of its efficiency. Another is-sue discussed in the paper concerns a group of people, which is susceptible to referring to ecology and natural values in promotional activities. Finally, the paper identifies the factors that decide whether the positioning based on the natural values of territorial units is effective or not.

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