The Role Of Urban Marketing In Attracting Foreign Direct Investment In Croatian Cities

Attracting foreign direct investment is one of the primary goals of today's regions and cities. The term includes virtually all kinds of investments by foreign companies or natural persons in the economy of a country. The significance of foreign direct investments (FDI) comes to light in the 80s due to several reasons. One of the most important is networking and liberalization of global financial markets, especially the European ones through the intensive process of globalization. Globalization and liberalization forced business entities to offer products and services that are able to withstand the competition and survive in the market. Developed countries have immediately recognized the benefits of foreign direct investment (FDI), and they consider FDI an important channel for the activation of their own investment potentials which are indispensable for the economic growth. Therefore, within their own development strategies, the cities got occupied with how to attract foreign direct investment by creating favorable business environment which would be attractive and encouraging for foreign investors. With the strengthening of global competition, especially among world cities, and with the competition for limited funds, there is a growing interest for foreign direct investment as one of the successful instruments for increasing the efficiency of national local companies, for transfer of new knowledge, technologies and new management techniques, and all that in order to increase the competitiveness of the local urban economy and to catch up with other developed urban economies. Our point of interest in this paper are some of the strategies to attract FDI through the possibility of applying some marketing tools, with special emphasis on the role of FDI in the development of Croatian regions and cities. Thus, a strategic concept (model) for all Croatian cities has been elaborated in this paper so as to improve the marketing strategies and tools for successful systematic attraction of foreign direct investment and for enabling growth and development of local community.