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.