Chapter 8: Value and Marketing of Leisure
Description
In the field of recreation and leisure, both students and professionals are often asked to justify the value of their work— such as “What are you going to do with that degree?” This module explores how to effectively communicate the purpose, impact, and importance of recreation in various societal contexts. Emphasis will be placed on developing skills in advocacy, promotion, and strategic communication in marketing to ensure that the value of recreation is clearly understood and appreciated by diverse audiences.
Learning Goals
By the end of the readings for this module, you should be able to:
- Determine strategies for effective marketing in the public sector
- Evaluate how to market the work of recreation and leisure professionals to an external audience
Marketing in Public Organizations
Read
Start by reading Chapter 16: Marketing in the Public Sector from the book “Knowledge Solutions: Tools, Methods, and Approaches to Drive Organizational Performance” (Serrat, 2017). This chapter focuses on the uniqueness of marketing in public organizations, which is where many RLS professionals work, making the direction it proposes particularly relevant.
One key idea from the chapter emphasizes the role of marketing in public sector:
Marketing is the activity, set of institutions, and processes —always inter-connected and interdependent—meant to identify, anticipate, create, communicate, deliver, and exchange valuable offerings that satisfy clients, audiences, partners, and society at large. In an era when public sector organizations must perform better to respond better to the public interest, irrespective of whether they govern the character of public provision as opposed to producing goods and services them-selves, marketing can help.
Serrat, 2017; 124
Knowledge Check
Once you are finished with the chapter, check your knowledge below:
Watch
Once you have read the chapter on Marketing in the Public Sector, The Power of Parks below from the National Recreation and Parks Association which focuses on the impact as well as benefits of parks to society.
Reflection: The Power of Parks
After completing all the tasks above, please then follow the prompt below for a reflection question to test the understanding of your knowledge.
Note: If you want to keep your responses, please be sure to export them when you are finished. If you navigate away from this page, your responses will not be saved.
Key Terms
- Public sector: Part of the economy that are funded by the government or government-owned organizations
- Recreation: Promotes activities, experiences, and events trying to attract citizens to engage
- Leisure: Investments in activities, experiences, and events that people enjoy
- Marketing: All activities that a business uses to promote, deliver, or communicate to sell it’s product or services
- Public provision: The services government-funded organizations provide for the public to ensure all needs of the citizens are met
