LOYALTY IN CITY MARKETING: THE CASE OF ISTANBUL

Year 2017, Volume: 5 Issue: 1, 77 - 91, 01.06.2017

İlknur Bilgen Gülsüm Vezir Oğuz

Abstract

There are many popular cities known as real brands in the world. In Turkey these cases are very limited. Istanbul is likely to be the most popular one. Especially tourists perceive the city as one of the most valuable brands in the whole world. However, citizens frequently complain about the crowd and also traffic in the city. Governors make an effort to promote their cities to become brands. Loyalty is one of the most important outputs of city branding. It is questioned in this research if it could be applied to cities as well. People thought to become loyal to the city that they were born or they live. The aim of this paper is to define the behavioral and attitudinal loyalty differences due to the individuals' place of birth and the place they currently live. A descriptive research was designed in order to examine the topic. Data were gathered from 170 respondents via online surveys. Parametric analyses were used to investigate the data because of their statistical power. According to the research results attitudinal loyalty was higher in the birthplace and behavioral loyalty in the current location. This paper seems to be valuable for researchers that it applies loyalty concepts to a city.

Keywords

City Marketing, City Branding, Brand Loyalty, Behavioral Loyalty, Attitudinal Loyalty

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