ABSTRACT: The sustainable development of the local communities represents a rather sensitive
topic, that incorporates and integrates elements related to the both concepts:”sustainable
development”, respectively „local communities”. If an amount of marketing is added, things tend to
become more complex, and, definitely, more complicated. The paper intends to answer, based on
the information already available in the literature, to the following questions: what is a local
community? What is the meaning of the sustainable development of a local community? Does
marketing contribute to and support the sustainable development of the local communities? The
answers to these questions are aimed to provide the appropriate background for defining the
concept of marketing of the local communities and for the identification of the ways this concept
may be employed in order to support the sustainable development of the local communities.