Touristic product assessment in terms of destination branding: Kahramanmaraş case study

The aim of this research is to find out the optimum touristic product preferences for Kahramanmaraş in accordance with the city's potential for marketing purposes among stakeholders, to determine the degree of the importance of the touristic product and to examine the results derived from this research. For this reason, there have been 22 face-to face interviews made with stakeholders who are local people, local authorities, NGO's executives and tourism enterprises in Kahramanmaraş. Furthermore, the participants were asked questions with the aid of AHP technique that is a multi-criteria decision-making method, for the purpose of touristic product assessment and the data were collected. This research includes three sections. In the first section, information about the concepts of touristic product, its variations and its marketing. In the second section, there were information about branding and branding concepts as well as the basic introduction of Kahramanmaraş that is a subject to this research. In the last section, the data were deciphered, and the factor pool was compared with the other factors in literature review in order to code the data. Original excerpts from the original interview were also used in order to increase the trust in data security and to clarify the findings. The interview data were analyzed using the MAXQDA 18 package program and the AHP survey data were analyzed using the Super Decision package program. As a result of this research, many experiences, information and even new touristic points are likely to emerge new attraction emerged in the lights of Kahramanmaraş touristic products, tourism enterprises and tourism activities. Furthermore, there have been some reviews and recommendations how to make Kahramanmaraş a tourism attraction center and who is going to take the responsibility. In conclusion of these evaluations, the data was provided to help Kahramanmaraş overcome its deficiencies in marketing and to establish and implement an effective marketing strategy.