Rebecca J. Vogt

Marketing rural communities: a qualitative study on the power of community images

What do prospective new residents see when they look at local images on a community website? Are the pictures conveying the meaning that the community wanted? These questions were central to a study of six communities located in the Great Plains of the United States to discover and apply innovative marketing concepts and methods to attract new residents to rural communities and regions. Market image research using a modified business marketing model was conducted with current and potential new residents. Findings suggest that images do not always communicate the intended message and that the same image can portray different messages to different people. The findings suggest that by tailoring the types of image and way images are used, communities can enhance their ability to market their community to new residents. Rural economic developers, chambers of commerce, and business owners can incorporate the recommendations to improve targeted employee recruitment, as well as general new resident recruitment.

Community Leaders, Business Ownership, and Support of Entrepreneurship Development: The Role of Macroentrepreneurs

Macroentrepreneurs are community leaders with entrepreneurial experience and are likely to understand the problems of initiating business ventures within communities. Through their leadership role they are assumed to create a facilitative community1 entrepreneurship environment by helping develop the local social, economic, and physical infrastructure to benefit nascent and extant entrepreneurs and in turn the broader community. Also identified as community entrepreneurs in the literature, they have been the subject of theory and conjecture but relatively little empirical research. Leaders in six communities were surveyed to examine the characteristics differentiating involvement in a local entrepreneurship program, including present and past business ownership. Results indicated that macroentrepreneurs, especially current business owners, tended to be less knowledgeable and involved in the entrepreneurship program than non-business owning community leaders. The findings suggest that in initiating community entrepreneurship programs community development practitioners need to involve a broad spectrum of leaders that goes beyond the business sector.