Abhatoo - Centre Nationale de Documentation

Information services cannot apply marketing techniques as practiced by the private sector,

without adapting them to their specific needs. In fact, they are not only concerned with the

implementation of user-oriented services - the basis of marketing: meeting the end-users’ needs - but

also, and maybe primarily, with the provision of services that meet the institutional needs of the

organization supporting them. In other words, one of the main marketing decisions of any information

services is to define its effective contribution to the specific mandates, objectives and activities of the

organization it belongs to. Therefore, information services must add to a basic « downstream »

marketing directed towards the users, an « upstream » marketing directed towards their control

structure. This approach can be defined as strategic marketing positioning. In this context,

understanding the environment in which an information service stands is a must. Environment is

defined here as the whole of the institutions (not only the support institution) that can effectively or

potentially influence the information service. The author has developed an original tool for the analysis

of information services marketing environment and tested it in several information services. This

method creates a «cartography» of an information service environment, allowing to characterize its

specificity and to understand its dynamic trends. It is based on the identification of the main actors in

the environment: the supervision structure, the partners and the competitors; as well as on an analysis

of their stakes, main objectives, professional values, operating modes and development targets. All

these actors are then situated in what are called « territories ». These territories can be situated in

relation to one another and make it possible to diagnose the dynamics of each territory and of the

global environment. A case study illustrates the external analysis and positioning method.