Determination of investment destination preference structures of investors in city marketing as a tool of local development and competition and an application in Uşak textile sectors

Radical changes experienced in the last two or three decades has made marketing approach an obligation for cities. The purpose of employing the concept of city marketing, which is based on product-like marketability of cities, is to correctly choose the target market for the cities, to identify the desires and needs of target markets and to create a marketing mix which will offer superior values compared to competitive cities.The purpose of this paper is to determine the investment destination preference structures and perceptions related to Uşak of textile businesses active in Uşak province. For this purpose, conjoint analysis was used for determining the destination preferences and two-sample t-test, variance analysis and chi-square analysis were used so that perceptions of the firms could be determined as regards Uşak as a textile investment destination.In the study, it has been found out that in addition to tradional factors such as cost, labour force and incentives, living quality, cluster and sectoral image are also important for destination preference. Obtained findings display that Uşak should invest more in especially sectoral image and living quality factors as a textile investment destination. In addition, it can be seen that the textile cluster in Uşak can ensure important competitive advantage.