City marketing: The case of Kars province

Nowadays which the world changes so fast, the roles that endowed to cities also shows changes. A large proportion of people who live in the world, are located in the cities, therefore, to create cities that are developed and have high level of welfare, is very important. In that manner, professional management of the cities is inevitable. Managers who have marketing culture and are future-oriented, and the residents who owns the city will play a major role in the forming of the city. Emergent awareness with marketing of the cities results with the enrichment of the city in every sense and becomes the center of attention. City of Kars which has 13.000 years of cultural and historical heritage, has a chance for being a brand city in the competition of global cities. Succeed of this chance is possible with the public and private sector participants, but this participations must be permanent and sustaniable, not temporarly. Aim of this thesis is, to analyse the current situation of Kars, to emphasize the presence of the resources that Kars has, and to be a guide. This thesis measures city-dwellers and visitors perception about Kars. For this purpose, factor analysis and structural equation modeling were used to determine the perception of the city. In this research, it's found that the environment, adequacy of services, international reflection, education, tourism, architecture and urban charm have important effects as city marketing elements on the perception of the city. The obtained results show that, the city of Kars should give weight to the elements of city marketing. Key Words: City Marketing, Brand City, Structural Equation Modeling.