City and brand value as a touristic product: The example of Mardin

Mardin has hosted many civilizations throughout the ages, and it contains important historical and cultural riches by carrying traces of these civilizations. It has an important value as a cosmopolitan city where different ethnic groups live together and create a layered cultural accumulation with its concrete and intangible data. In the literature part of the study, first of all, brand, branding and brand value components are explained in detail. Then, the concepts of city and brand city were examined. In the research part, the touristic product elements of Mardin, which comes to the forefront as culture and belief tourism, were revealed and the effect on the brand value of the city was tried to be determined. In this context, some suggestions were directed to 405 visitors by questionnaire method and the level of participation of these visitors to the statements was tried to be measured. The data used in the study were analyzed with the SPSS package program. In the study, the hypotheses of the research were tried to be tested with techniques such as Frequency Analysis, Factor Analysis, t-test, One-Way Analysis of Variance, Regression Analysis. The findings obtained from the study show that Mardin has a very high potential in terms of natural, historical and cultural attractions, it has been concluded that the visitors are loyal to the city and those who visit the city want to visit it again. In addition, it has been determined that Mardin is mostly visited by young tourists, men, married people and those with a bachelor's degree. In terms of income level, the number of visitors is very close to each other; It was determined that they generally stayed for a long time and visited the city mostly for cultural purposes.