On the basis of literature review and the comparison of current research methodologies, the paper points out that there are theoretical or hypothesis shortcomings in current research methodologies to different degrees, This article studies the effect of city marketing on urban competitiveness by fitting the structural equation model with 209 sample cities, which demonstrates how to use the structural equation model in researches on city marketing, so as to make up the deficiencies of research methods and quantitative researches on city marketing.