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Background and problem formulation: The spatial environment in Europe and the rest of the world has become highly intensified, leading communities to compete for the same scarce resources such as talented employees, tourism and foreign investments. This has lead municipalities and regional authorities to deploy place marketing as a strategy in the governance of cities and regions. Place marketing is especially important of development in small, rural municipalities with a vulnerable economic situation. The researched area is the County of Dalarna, a region suffering from urbanization, unemployment and other demographic imbalances.

Purpose: The purpose of this study is to investigate what obstacles there are to implement the success factor framework of the Rainisto model in small municipalities.

Methodology: Both primary- and secondary was used. Secondary data was retrieved mostly from the participating municipalities own web pages. The primary data was collected from qualitative semi-structured interviews. The sample consisted of six municipalities in Dalarna from which, the manager from the business office was interviewed.

Results and conclusions: The biggest obstacles for small municipalities to implement the success factor framework are the how and ability factors. The how and ability factors in this case serve as generic terms for how able a municipality is to implement the model. The obstacles that we have derived from the empirical findings and the analysis is lack of organizing capacity, political unity, resourcing, leadership and momentum, all of which falls under the how and ability factors.