A PRELIMINARY APPROACH FOR GIS APPLICATIONS IN REGIONAL BUSINESS AND ECONOMY
探讨了将地理信息系统（GIS）应用于区域商业与经济发展的可能性，分析了区域商业环境、地方营销与GIS的理论关系，并讨论了基于GIS的地方营销在中国区域发展中的潜在应用。
It is estimated that more than eighty percent of socioeconomic and business information has spatial or locational characteristics; the effective use of such spatial data can allocate resources rationally, reduce operational costs of business potentially, and regulate, monitor and improve regional business and economic environment usefully. On the other hand, GIS not only are powerful tools, methods and technologies about handling, analyzing, representing of geographic data, but also provide concepts, theories and methodologies on understanding of geographical world. Based on such understanding, this paper is attempting to introduce GIS to regional business and economic development. The relationships between regional business environment, place-marketing and GIS are discussed theoretically; and the potential applications of GIS-based place-marketing in regional development, especially in China's context, are also argued.