The impact of experiential marketing on customer loyalty: A research on large scale hotels in İzmir

Changing customer demands with competitive states of today, force firms improve themselves for new approach to differentiate them from their competitors and to acquire competitive advantage. In this context, the firms have changed and developed the strategies of marketing to provide customer experience rather than selling product or service. Together with the experience economy, the process from products to services and from services to experiences has aroused the term, experiential marketing, for customers. Experiential marketing is a marketing approach that is arised with development of the experience economy. Experiential marketing which aims to make products and services unique for a customer is an important tool in gaining customer loyalty to aim creating customer experience. In this study, it examines that the impact of experiential marketing perceptions of customers who stay in large scale hotels upon customer loyalty. This study mainly consists of three chapters. The first chapter examines the theoretical approach to experience economy, customer experience and experiential marketing and emphasize the importance of experiential marketing. Second chapter introduces to explain the customer loyalty and examines the relationship between experiential marketing and customer loyalty. The third chapter is the research part of the study. In this chapter, the research findings have been stated. SPSS program was used for data analysis. In accordance with these, the research findings are interpreted in line with the information obtained through literature search. Keywords: Experience Economy, Customer Experience, Experiential Marketing, Customer Loyalty