The importance of gastronomic identity and gastronomic experience in destination branding: A research in Moda district

The concept of brand, which is one of the basic building blocks of marketing, is becoming more and more important every day in order to reveal the distinctive features of destinations in the tourism sector. Increasing the preferability of destinations, marketing them correctly and thus enabling them to become a brand has become a necessity for them to compete in the sector. At this point, in terms of increasing the preferability of a touristic destination by becoming a brand, it is seen within the framework of research that gastronomy tourism and the desire of tourists to obtain gastronomic experience play a more active role in this regard. Today, gastronomic attractions are among the reasons that attract tourists to a certain destination. Due to the increase in participation in gastronomic tourism, destinations have started to direct their brand positioning efforts for tourists towards the field of gastronomy tourism. In this context, in our study, first of all, the concepts of destination, brand and gastronomic identity, as well as the sub-elements of these concepts were mentioned; the importance of gastronomic identity and gastronomic experience in the branding of a destination is emphasized. First of all, Explanatory Factor Analysis was applied in order to determine the scales and the factors belonging to these scales. Two different path models were developed considering the obtained results from these analysis. The first model, the basic model, examined the effects of gastronomic identity and gastronomic experience on destination branding. In the second model, the detailed model, the factors of gastronomic identity and destination branding were included in the analysis and the effects were examined at the level of factors. The survey conducted on 405 visitors who visited the Moda district of Istanbul and engaged in gastronomic activities was analyzed with the Partial Least Squares Method - Structural Equation Modeling. According to the findings of the research, it has been seen that gastronomic identity and experience have positive effects on destination branding within the framework of the basic model, and that gastronomic experience plays a mediating role on the perception of gastronomic identity in destination branding. According to the detailed model results, it has been determined that this effect continues at the level of certain factors and the gastronomic experience plays a mediating role.