Our study seeks to identify and evaluate the role that investment promotion has
played in attracting new FDI to the ASEAN region (excluding Brunei, Myanmar
and Vietnam). We examine the marketing facets of the different investment promotion
programs employed by these countries. However, rather than address the
substance, or content, of investment promotion programs, we review and assess the
effectiveness of 12 different “marketing techniques” which were identified in an
earlier study conducted by Wells & Wint (1990).
Based on their empirical work, Wells and Wint had concluded that different stages
in the investment decision-making process require different marketing techniques.
Image-building, for example, requires marketing techniques, like advertising, that
can reach a broader, less informed audience of investors, whereas a personalized
sales presentation is most effective at later stages of the investment decision process.
They observed that those countries which were most adept at attracting FDI had
graduated from image-building to investment-generating and that this evolution was