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JPMD
1,2 A great place to live, work and play
Conceptualising place satisfaction in the case
of a city’s residents
138 Andrea Insch
University of Otago, Dunedin, New Zealand, and
Magdalena Florek
The Poznan University of Economics, Poznan, Poland

Abstract
Purpose – A city’s resident population is strategically the most valuable segment among those
targeted by place marketing practitioners. Residents’ quality of life and their satisfaction with their
city of residence should be the ultimate aim of place management. The aim of this paper is, therefore,
to develop a conceptualisation of place satisfaction for city residents that can be applied by place
managers.
Design/methodology/approach – By reviewing prior definitions and conceptualisations of the
related concepts of quality of life and satisfaction, a model of city resident place satisfaction is
presented.
Findings – From a broad survey of the literature, three main fields were identified that have dealt
with satisfaction – psychology, sociology and human ecology, and marketing. Drawing on, and
integrating insights from, these separate, yet interrelated fields, the concept of resident place
satisfaction is established and then the identified components of the working model of resident place
satisfaction are presented.
Practical implications – The tensions facing place managers in satisfying internal targets’
interests are outlined, followed by examples of performance measures and indicators designed to
support place managers’ complex task of positively shaping the lifestyles of their city inhabitants,
workers and pleasure seekers.
Originality/value – The sub-field of place management and marketing has emerged in the last
decade and recognises satisfaction with a place as important, but, as yet, this concept remains
theoretically undeveloped. This paper draws on concepts from other, related disciplines to establish
the concept of resident place satisfaction as a contribution to the theory and practice of place
management.
Keywords Cities, Quality of life
Paper type Conceptual paper

Introduction
Maintaining a stable, diverse and appropriately skilled populace is vital for a place’s
sustainability. Cities, by their very nature, depend on their residents for economic,
social, cultural and environmental vibrancy. In turn, a resident’s satisfaction with the
city where they live is shaped, in part, by the nature or perceived quality of
these interrelated environments. Outsiders, too, are interested in residents’ level of
Journal of Place Management and place satisfaction. For example, in the competitive arena of business migration and
Development investment attraction, a place manager needs to demonstrate convincingly that their
Vol. 1 No. 2, 2008
pp. 138-149 city’s residents enjoy a higher level of well-being and satisfaction than those of rival
q Emerald Group Publishing Limited locations. This need is driven by the consideration of so-called “soft factors” during the
1753-8335
DOI 10.1108/17538330810889970 business investment decision-making process (Biel, 1993). In addition to the traditional
hard factors, quality of life is evaluated by company executives, management and their Conceptualising
families in their decision to relocate and invest. Furthermore, factors such as quality of place satisfaction
life are interrelated to other “hard” factors that are considered during this process –
local labour markets, infrastructure, transportation, education and training
opportunities (for an extensive list, see Kotler et al., 1993). Thus, achieving a desired
level of satisfaction among citizens should be the ultimate goal of place managers
(Guhathakurta and Stimson, 2007; Kotler et al., 1999). 139
To recruit and retain valued residents, city policy makers and planners must
consider the motives, expectations and needs of current and prospective residents.
There are basic requirements of living, working and playing in urban communities
that most people share – affordable and accessible housing, transport, healthcare,
education and training, leisure and recreation facilities, other public amenities, and
opportunities for social interaction (Williams et al., 2008). This list may differ
depending on an individual’s previous experiences, which shape their expectations,
motivations and attitudes towards the place. Over time, a resident’s level of satisfaction
with their experiences in that particular place can influence their decision to remain or
search for alternatives. Various personal and situational factors can also stimulate or
trigger this evaluation of the qualities that the place has to offer and the perceived
value for money that living in the place provides. If, for example, a resident’s
evaluation of the city in which they live improves continuously and there are no
intervening life events, a resident’s attachment and commitment to the city is expected
to grow. Measuring and monitoring resident place satisfaction is therefore an essential
performance indicator for city, regional and other territorial authorities.

Defining the concept – in theory and practice

At the local level, governing bodies typically survey residents to gauge their level of
satisfaction with the quality of service delivery, their attitudes towards the city and to
obtain secondary data to assess objective indicators of quality of life. Cities sometimes
survey residents to assess their expectations about the importance of various services
and their satisfaction with the delivery of major civic services (e.g. garbage collection,
safety using facilities, clean streets and effective communication with the council).
Identified performance gaps (i.e. discrepancies between expectations and satisfaction)
then become council priorities. This type of survey does not measure resident place
satisfaction per se, but their satisfaction with the actions of their elected council. To
assess the life satisfaction of their residents, some councils survey different population
groups to gauge their overall quality of life. Results are often analysed to identify
relationships between this score and objective personal indicators such as household
income, occupation, age and residential address. In addition, such surveys measure
residents’ perceptions of different aspects of living in the city – the built environment,
community health and safety, diversity, access and participation, culture and the arts,
the natural environment, leisure and recreation, transport, governance and citizen
information. These or similar aspects become dominant in the local government search
to improve their performance. A measure of overall satisfaction and value for money is
also obtained to monitor changes over time as well as benchmarking against other
cities. These results together with quality of life indicators are often used for city
promotional activities.
JPMD In the literature, different terms are used which refer to satisfaction with aspects of
1,2 one’s life. The most common of these terms include: well-being, life satisfaction,
happiness and subjective or reported well-being (Andrén and Martinsson, 2003;
Frey and Stutzer, 2002; Kahneman et al., 1999; Kim, 2004; Ng, 1997; Pavot and Diener,
1993; Smith, 2001; The Economist Intelligence Unit, 2005; Veenhoven, 1996).
Ng (1997, cited in Kilinç, 2006, p. 17) suggests that life satisfaction is the ultimate
140 objective of people. “As a positive conceptualization, life satisfaction is considered as one
of the most important dimensions of mental health and quality of life and referred to as
happiness.” Happiness, according to Kubilay (1994, cited in Özer, 2004) refers to
well-being status. Other studies suggest that life satisfaction is a measure of well-being
(Frey and Stutzer, 2002, cited in Andrén and Martinsson, 2003). So-called subjective
well-being as a counterpart of happiness refers to how people evaluate their lives and it
can be broken-down and analysed in two parts (Diener et al., 1997; Pavot and Diener, 1993).
The first one, the affective component, can be further divided into pleasant and
unpleasant affect; the second, the cognitive component, is referred to as life satisfaction
(Andrews and Withey, 1976, cited in Pavot and Diener, 1993). In other words a:
[. . .] person’s evaluation of his or her life may be in the form of cognitions (e.g. when a person
gives conscious evaluative judgments about his or her satisfaction with life as a whole, or
evaluative judgments about specific aspects of his or life such as recreation) and also in the
form of affect (people experiencing unpleasant or pleasant moods and emotions in reaction to
their lives) (Diener et al., 1997).

Insights from the literature

The complex nature of places in general, cities in particular, and individuals’
perceptions of these environments, supports the need for a multi-disciplinary review of
prior knowledge on life satisfaction and related, previously mentioned concepts. From
a broad survey of the literature, three main fields were identified that have dealt with
satisfaction – psychology, sociology and human ecology, and marketing. The sub-field
of place management and marketing has emerged in the last decade and recognises
quality of life and other quality factors as important, but as yet these remain
theoretically undeveloped. Therefore, it is the goal of this paper to drawn upon
concepts from other, related disciplines to establish the concept of resident place
satisfaction as a contribution to the theory and practice of place management.
The purpose of this review, therefore, is to find support for the identified components
of the working model of resident place satisfaction.
In the psychology literature, the concept of life satisfaction is usually applied to the
whole life experience. Within this field, several definitions are proposed. According to
Özer (2004), life satisfaction is a situation or a consequence obtained through
comparing someone’s expectations with possessions. Shin and Johnson (1978, cited in
Pavot and Diener, 1993) on the other hand, consider life satisfaction as a judgmental
process in which individuals assess the quality of their lives on the basis of their own
unique set of criteria. Thus, a person reports a high level of life satisfaction if, in
comparison with the self-defined standard, the degree of matching those criteria is
relatively high. Therefore, as Pavot and Diener (1993, p. 164) conclude “life satisfaction
is a conscious cognitive judgment of one’s life in which the criteria for judgment are up
to the person”.
 Following the concept of implicit social cognition (Greenwald and Banaji, 1995, Conceptualising
cited in Kim, 2004), Kim (2004) distinguishes two kinds of life satisfaction (being place satisfaction
identified with happiness and well-being): implicit and explicit. Implicit life satisfaction
is defined as an individual’s non-conscious or automatic evaluations of his or her life in
contrast to explicit life satisfaction, being a conscious or controlled evaluative judgment
of one’s life. It suggests that life satisfaction is related to quality of life but their nature is
different. Life-satisfaction surveys are perceived as subjective while quality of life 141
represents objective determinants (The Economist Intelligence Unit, 2005). The criticism
of life-satisfaction surveys centre on their relative character, since responses reflect the
dominant view of life, rather than the actual quality of life in a place (The Economist
Intelligence Unit, 2005). Life satisfaction is thus seen as a subjective judgment of
objective factors. Similarly, a well known measure in the psychology discipline –
satisfaction with life scale allows respondents to weight domains of their lives in terms
of their own values, which leads to global judgments of life satisfaction and is predicted
to depend on a comparison of life circumstances to individual standards (Diener et al.,
1985, cited in Pavot and Diener, 1993).
Among the conditions that shape quality of life, according to Wahl and Weisman
(2003), the environment plays a meaningful role in creating a good life. Based on the
findings of Fernández-Ballesteros (2001), those who are satisfied with their environment
tend to be more satisfied with their lives. What increases people’s well-being is the
harmony between personal preferences and environmental features (Kilinç, 2006).
People, and more specifically residents, perceive environmental features according to
the salience of their needs (Kahana et al., 2003). Thus, perception of one’s life determines
its assessment and as such evaluation of quality of life alone is not sufficient to measure
life satisfaction. The same assumption might apply when evaluating the satisfaction
with the places that people live everyday.
Physical space is called a “place” when personal, group, or cultural processes have
been given meaning through it (Low and Altman, 1992). If the social and physical
resources within residential environments are convenient to satisfy the needs and
preferences of residents, attachment (which might be understood as loyalty in marketing
terminology) to the place occurs (Shumaker and Taylor, 1983). As with other people or
objects, it is possible to create emotional and close bonds with places ( Low and Altman,
1992). As Rubinstein and Parmelee (1992) suggest, personal experience and social
interaction are crucial aspects of attaching people to particular places and, what is more,
to make a place part of one’s identity. This suggests that experience is necessary to
evaluate an individual’s satisfaction, as a consequence of a clash of expectations with a
place’s reality. Attachment to a place (e.g. a city) might also be an effect of people’s and
places’ characteristics, thus influencing attitudes and behaviours towards a place
(Shumaker and Taylor, 1983). Similarly, Rubinstein and Parmelee (1992) understand
sense of place as a result of people’s life experiences, specific circumstances and personal
interpretations. Consequently, personal satisfaction can differ significantly from the
objective indicators of quality of life assessment.
Shumaker and Taylor (1983) argue that there is a strong positive relationship
between satisfaction and attachment. It can be expected that place satisfaction leads to
place attachment, and as is suggested in the literature (Shumaker and Taylor, 1983;
Rubinstein and Parmelee, 1992), that place attachment plays the mediational role of
creating life satisfaction.
JPMD Research in the field of human ecology and sociology more closely examines the
1,2 interactions of humans and their environments and in the case of cities focuses on the
neighbourhood as a place to live. There are overlaps in the treatment of well-being and
life satisfaction in psychology and human ecology. Whereas, the Satisfaction with Life
construct in psychology deals with overall life satisfaction, human ecology focuses more
on the physical and natural environments in which people live. Environments, by their
142 intrinsic nature, are complex places which possess “a structure interrelating physical,
social and cultural properties to encourage certain patterns of behavior” (La Gory et al.,
1985, p. 406). In the case of cities, particular neighbourhoods are especially important
since they directly affect the choices and actions of residents. Scholars in this discipline
argue that neighbourhoods’ congruence with the needs and abilities of their inhabitants
seems to influence resident quality of life and the functioning of the local community
(La Gory, 1982; Michelson, 1976). Studies of neighbourhood satisfaction suggest that a
resident’s lifestyle will influence their perceived neighbourhood satisfaction since
different lifestyles encourage a different set of expectations about the place of residence.
For example, an elderly resident desires convenience to shops and medical facilities,
whereas a young person needs a variety of sports facilities and a young couple with
children require safe spaces for their kids to socialise and play.
Similar to the psychology literature, environmental or neighbourhood satisfaction is
affected by the physical and psychological state of the individual making the evaluation.
As with approaches in psychology and marketing, measures of neighbourhood
satisfaction contain objective neighbourhood characteristics and subjective mental
constructions of the neighbourhood. The research instrument applied by La Gory et al.
(1985), for example, contains several indicators of each aspect. For example, subjective
perceptions of a neighbourhood can include: the social environment (neighbours), noise,
traffic, neighbourhood maintenance, safety and security and convenience to shopping
and other community facilities. On the other hand, objective qualities include: level of
urbanism (i.e. city urban, suburban, and rural), socio-economic status, income,
population density, ethnicity and mobility. In their study of neighbourhood satisfaction
among an older population, La Gory et al. (1985) showed that subjective assessments of
the physical and social context of the neighbourhood significantly influence their
satisfaction, whereas objective contextual variables, while related to satisfaction,
showed little causal influence.
As La Gory and Pipkin (1981) note, residential spaces and places are comprised of
complex bundles of services and have embedded personal and cultural meanings for
each individual. Further, neighbourhoods contain localised networks of interactions
between these individuals, which in turn shape their expectations and “consumption”
satisfaction of specific services in these immediate environments. Owing to this
complexity, place satisfaction might be more strongly influenced by individuals’
perceptions of the attributes or qualities of the place. Thus, a model of place satisfaction
must determine the interrelationships between objective and subjective place qualities
and the individual assessments of residents. This borrows from the logic of La Gory
et al.’s. (1985) model of neighbourhood satisfaction in which differences in individual
interactions with objective qualities of a place and subjective definitions produce
different amounts of satisfaction. From a methodological point of view, this suggests
the need for the coverage of different sub-populations within a city, due to individual
differences that colour the differences in subjective and objective evaluations.
Research has demonstrated that age and the cohort effect both influence levels of Conceptualising
neighbourhood satisfaction. Infirm elderly people may report a higher level of place satisfaction
satisfaction as they have greater community attachment due to the perceived difficulties
in finding a new place to live. Furthermore, residents with different levels of
environmental competency respond differently to the same set of local conditions. The
main contribution of this research stream is to emphasise that residents occupying the
same physical spaces do not necessarily perceive these environments the same. In 143
addition, these studies provide useful guidelines for selecting appropriate research
designs and methods to study place satisfaction in an empirical setting.
Mainstream marketing has dealt with the concept of life satisfaction through the
concept of consumer well-being. Not surprisingly, the definition and operationalisation
of this concept emphasises an individual’s subjective satisfaction with their material
possessions over the entire product lifecycle – acquisition, preparation, consumption,
possession, maintenance and disposal (Lee et al., 2002). According to Lee and Sirgy
(2004), consumer well-being also involves an objective assessment by experts of
society’s costs and benefits from the aggregate outcomes of consumers’ experiences at
each stage. Researchers have examined a variety of product categories and service
providers and have linked consumer satisfaction with a mix of retail establishments in
an individual’s community to life satisfaction (i.e. subjective quality of life)
(Meadow, 1983) and between possession satisfaction and life satisfaction, especially
for older people and low-income individuals (Leelakulthanit et al., 1991). Further, Lee
et al. (2002) argue that satisfaction with all stages of the product life cycle has an effect
on other life domains affecting overall life satisfaction. Following this logic, it could be
argued that a city resident’s life can be split into different stages of their residence –
which, in turn, can influence other domains of their life satisfaction.
Owing to the focus on experiencing a place at various points in time, most indicators
used in practice tend to focus on the notion of consumption satisfaction defined in the
marketing literature. This phase in the consumption life cycle is more important for
services and has been defined as the “satisfaction resulting from the use of goods and
services in the particular community” (Lee and Sirgy, 2004, p. 51). The service rich nature
of city residence suggests the extension of service consumption to the conceptualisation
of place satisfaction, since cities are bundles of services that are experienced by residents.
Like consumer services generally, a resident’s “consumption” of a city’s community
assets “cannot be possessed or inventoried” (Lee and Sirgy, 2004, p. 51). Thus, to
improve city residents’ well-being and in turn their perceived satisfaction and objective
evaluations of place satisfaction, service providers in the community must direct their
efforts to maximise resident benefits across the rich bundle of services during the
residential “life cycle”.
The mainstream marketing concept of post-purchase dissonance has been applied
to the context of place satisfaction/dissatisfaction by Kotler et al. (1993). They state
that “choosing a place almost always involves some post-purchase dissonance”
(Kotler et al., 1993, p. 58). According to Kotler et al. (1993), a buyer’s satisfaction is
based on the closeness between their expectations and the place’s perceived
performance. In the case of residents, they are exposed to the place performance all the
time since living there they experience the city continuously and in many aspects that
are usually not accessible for temporary visitors. The expectations are, however, the
subject of change since their permanent presence in the city might influence their
JPMD expectations compared to temporary performance. This means that residents’
1,2 expectations are not “one-off” as in the case of tourists, for example.

Development of the place satisfaction model

There are several important life satisfaction measures used in practice to monitor and
benchmark people’s quality of life in different countries and regions. For example, The
144 Economist Intelligence Unit’s quality of life multi-component index links the results of a
subjective life-satisfaction survey to the objective determinants of quality of life across
countries. Another measurement instrument, the Quality of Life Index, has been
developed by International Living (2008), whilst the Australian Unity Wellbeing Index
monitors the subjective wellbeing of the Australian population by measuring quality of
life as experienced by the average Australian. The latter consists of two indicators:
personal and national wellbeing (for further information, see Australian Unity Ltd, 2008).
From the marketing perspective, across countries, companies and industries, the
Customer Satisfaction Index (CSI) is used to evaluate the satisfaction of customers
(O’Loughlin and Coenders, 2002). There are several modifications of the CSI depending
on the country, with different factors taken into consideration (e.g. American Customer
Satisfaction Index (ACSI), European ECSI, Swedish SCSB, Norwegian NCSB, Swiss
SWICS, Korean KCSI). CSI is based on the cumulative satisfaction concept (Olsen and
Johnson, 2003). Cumulative satisfaction, next to transaction-specific satisfaction, are two
views of satisfaction apparent in the marketing literature ( Johnson and Fornell, 1991).
Transaction-specific satisfaction defines a consumer’s satisfaction as the evaluation of
his or her experience a particular product or service transaction. Cumulative
satisfaction, in turn, is defined as the overall evaluation of a product or service provider
(Olsen and Johnson, 2003). Thus, a cumulative evaluation leaves the time period of
evaluation open (Olsen and Johnson, 2003) and evaluates the whole set of the experiences
with a product or service to date, based on the entire experience from intention to
purchase decision making (Fornell et al., 1996). This approach seems to be especially
suitable for places since residents of the city “keep experiencing” their location all the
time and their evaluations and relationships with a city can develop or change over time.
Based on the cumulative satisfaction concept, the ACSI (2008) was used next, as the
basis for creating a model of city residents’ satisfaction. ACSI uses a multi-equation
econometric model developed at the University of Michigan’s Ross School of Business.
ACSI produces four levels of indices or scores: a national customer satisfaction score,
ten economic sector scores, industry scores, and scores for companies and federal
government agencies. The ACSI model is a cause-and-effect model with indices for
drivers of satisfaction (customer expectations, perceived quality, and perceived value),
satisfaction (ACSI) in the centre, and consequences of satisfaction (customer
complaints and customer loyalty) (Figure 1). Analysis of particular indices and
impacts can determine which drivers of satisfaction, if improved, would have the most
effect on customer loyalty which, at the same time, is the ultimate consequence,
measurement and goal of the model.
The particular variables in the ACSI model are measured by specific items. Customer
expectations measures the customer’s anticipation of the quality of a company’s
products or services. Perceived quality is the evaluation of the customer’s evaluation via
recent consumption experience of the quality of a company’s products or services.
Perceived value is a measure of quality relative to price paid or the “value for money”
 Conceptualising
Perceived Customer place satisfaction
Quality Complaints

Customer
Perceived
Value
Satisfaction 145
(ACSI)

Customer Customer
Expectations Loyalty
Figure 1.
The American Customer
Satisfaction Index
Source: ACSI (2008)

aspect of the customer experience. Value is defined as the ratio of perceived quality
relative to price (O’Loughlin and Coenders, 2002). Finally, customer complaints are
measured as a percentage of respondents who indicate they have complained to a
company directly about a product or service within a specified time frame (ACSI, 2008).
But, according to Yang et al. (2004), researchers found in customer satisfaction surveys
that most respondents rarely complained even if they were unsatisfied with products or
services, which resulted in large amounts of missing data on complaints, thus
its effectiveness is questionable. The indices are measured by several questions that are
weighted within the model. The questions assess customer evaluations of the
determinants of each index. Indices are reported on a 0 to 100 scale. The ACSI model is
self-weighting to maximize the explanation of customer satisfaction on loyalty.
Using the model as a starting point, in the context of places, and based on the former
discussion, it is possible to adopt some of its elements and the identified relations to
look at residents’ satisfaction levels. At the same time, the authors argue that in this
case many elements (e.g. image which is included in the ECSI model) are part of the
broader place brand equity category that should be measured separately. Figure 2
shows the components of the working model of resident place satisfaction and the
hypothesised relationships between them.
The model above depicts the many possible relationships between the different
antecedents and consequence of this conceptualisation of city resident place satisfaction.

Perceived
Quality

Perceived Place Place

Value Satisfaction Attachment

Residents’ Figure 2.
Expectations Working model of resident
place satisfaction
JPMD As it shows, a resident’s expectations of the importance of various social and physical
1,2 resources in their city establish the benchmark against which they evaluate the quality
of these aspects of the city and shape their perceptions of the value for money that their
experiences as residents offer. In addition to their expectations of what the city should
offer, perceived value is an assessment of the ratio of perceived quality relative to price
(O’Loughlin and Coenders, 2002). In turn, their level of place satisfaction is expected to be
146 directly influenced by their expectations, perceptions of quality and value for money. As
discussed previously, city residents’ place satisfaction is linked to their place
attachment.
Development of appropriate scales and empirical assessment of the model is needed
to test these possible relationships between the model’s components based on the
conceptualisation of place satisfaction presented in this paper. The interdisciplinary
review of satisfaction and related concepts revealed a wealth of existing measures and
indicators that could be chosen, adapted and extended to measure place satisfaction in
this context. For example, overall satisfaction is usually measured by asking: “Are you
satisfied overall with the fact you live in your city?”; the residents’ expectations by:
“How important are particular aspects of living in your city?” and “How well are you
satisfied with their performance?”; perceived quality could be assessed by: “What are
the advantages and disadvantages of living in your city?” which reflect the areas of
positive and negative quality evaluation; finally perceived value (or value for money)
might be evaluated by: “Are you satisfied with the costs of living in the city? (overall
and according to particular aspects, e.g. housing, transport, entertainment, etc.)” The
appropriate scales need to be further employed and adjusted to particular model
dimensions. The key premise in the design of the survey instrument is to leave the
evaluation of satisfaction with the city to the subjective judgments of city residents.

Summary and conclusions

A strong case can be made for the notion that the ultimate goal of places is not financial
success but the welfare and satisfaction of their residents. As Guhathakurta and
Stimson (2007, p. 150) elaborate in support of this argument, “after the decline in
quality of life crosses a threshold, growth may slow down or even become negative”.
This idea, in turn, rests on the assumption that residents play an instrumental role in
shaping the economic, cultural and social prosperity of a place, especially at the local
level – communities, towns and cities – where people interact. Their one-off, repeated
or ongoing interactions with each other, and also with outsiders, like tourists, define
the character and atmosphere of the place. Also, as Blichfeldt (2005, p. 394) explains,
“residents – and interactions with such residents – are essential elements of place
brands (and especially so for tourists)”. Further, Therkelsen and Halkier (2004) argue
that locals, in this case city residents, are a central stakeholder group in the branding
process. Thus, satisfied residents with positive perceptions of their city reinforce and
may communicate favourable associations with that place. Conversely, an unhappy,
dissatisfied resident can harm the brand image of the city held by visitors and
potentially other residents through negative word of mouth. Since the interactions
which residents have with tourists and visitors are generally uncontrollable, it is in the
interests of the city’s managers to ensure its residents are satisfied customers, proud
inhabitants and city ambassadors.
 An assumption is often made that residents live in communities that best satisfy their Conceptualising
preferences but, at the same time, according to Kotler et al. (1993), it is not always true place satisfaction
because people might, for example, find it risky or difficult to move to another place. The
complexity of this situation has two consequences: people may leave the city for
competitive, more attractive locations or stay in the place but continue to be dissatisfied
with their city. Both situations are unfavourable and for these reasons, accurate and
rigorous measurement of resident place satisfaction should be a priority for place 147
managers. The conceptualisation of place satisfaction and development of a working
model presented in this paper was partly motivated by the pragmatic needs of
practitioners, as well as the lack of conceptual development of resident place satisfaction
in place management theory. Without a meaningful conceptualisation of place
satisfaction, appropriate indicators cannot be identified and consequently, reliable
evaluations of quality of life and wellbeing cannot be made. Consistent measures and
reliable indicators provide the basis for assessing whether a place is achieving its goals
according to its residents – the ultimate place stakeholders of cities.

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Further reading
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of Marketing, Vol. 56 No. 1, pp. 6-21.
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understanding the process from the business customer’s perspective”, Industrial
Marketing Management, Vol. 31 No. 4, pp. 393-401.

Corresponding author
Magdalena Florek can be contacted at: m.florek@ae.poznan.pl

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