Marketing Management in Turkey

The introduction of consumer products can be traced back to the invention of the wheel, and after the first invention, humankind discovered that what can be consumable is marketable. Therefore, it is safe to suggest that the development of marketing, in thought and practice, has always been hand-in-hand with the evolution of humankind. Modern Turkey or Anatolia, one of the cradles of civilisation located in the Fertile Crescent or, in other words, Old Mesopotamia, has always been the centre of trade and marketing. As an emerging economy, Turkey has a lot to combine the ways of western practices with market dynamics unique to her, whereas authors find the development of marketing practices in Turkey exceptionally interesting. Therefore, this chapter aims to provide an insight and a brief history regarding the development of the Turkish marketing context throughout the years. We believe that this contribution will be helpful to those who are interested in the development of marketing in an emerging economy in an academic fashion, as well as for those who are attracted to follow the footprints of the modern era’s business environment.

Throughout history, the actions of human beings have been analysed based on ethics. In every aspect of human life, ethics is an essential element, and business life is no exception. Business ethics, and marketing ethics in particular, has been a subject of interest in both the academic and business world. Apart from doing what is perceived as correct, acting in a socially responsible and sustainable manner becomes compulsory, as the changes in ecological and social environment necessitate this. There have been warning signs from nature such as environmental disasters and climate change, and it is no longer possible for for firms or individuals to continue with previous behaviours. Acting as if the world’s resources are limitless has caused damage to the environment. A new way of thinking and behaving is needed. The awareness and involvement levels about sustainability and social responsibility are not the same everywhere in the world. Culture has significant impact on perception of social issues such as social responsibility and sustainability. Turkey, as a developing country with its own cultural dynamics, differs from developed Western countries which makes analysing consumer ethics, corporate social responsibility and sustainable consumption in Turkey worthwhile.

In this chapter, concepts of business ethics, marketing ethics, consumer ethics, sustainable consumption and corporate social responsibility are discussed with specific examples from Turkey.

The sharing economy is a collection of economic and social activities where participants of the community share properties, resources, time and skills across online platforms. In this chapter, we start by identifying all the stakeholders and their characteristics within such an ecosystem. We then categorise factors leading to success in the sharing economies where the existence of these platforms has disrupted traditional businesses. To do so, demographic information about the community participants, specifications of the business models, enablers of the ecosystem, growth drivers and hindrance factors are explored in detail. From there on, we examine whether such success factors are applicable in the Turkish business environment where Internet retailing is in its infant stages, trust among people is quite low and economic welfare is lower than that of more developed economies. Finally, an assessment of the sharing economy landscape in Turkey is provided at the end of the chapter.

To outline the future of the sharing economy in Turkey, success indicators in the Turkish market are compared and contrasted with those of the United States, the United Kingdom and Brazil. A quick analysis reveals that despite its huge potential, Turkey still has not reached its full capacity in Internet usage, online or mobile retailing. That said, notwithstanding the low levels of trust among people, Turkey has a great potential of sharer base, given the demographic structure of its citizens. Recommendations for policy makers, incumbent firms, the sharing economy startups and marketers are provided in the chapter.

Market research and insight generation is the art of unifying relevant pieces of information when formulating the solution to a puzzle. The present chapter contributes to the market research industry and the literature on research methods by providing a detailed snapshot of the current state of the industry in Turkey, as an emerging market, together with the future outlook. The comprehensive review in convergence with expert precepts elucidates the transformation of the industry. In the last decade, the world has witnessed a digital revolution that has affected the way in which research is conducted, and the identity of the storyteller. The consumer is the principal actor, and researchers assume the roles of co-creators and curators who are responsible for combining different forms of data. The new roles have changed the perception of the term market research and have generated new labels to denote business in the digital era. From the study, conclusions can also be drawn regarding the impact of technology and new methods upon research designs. New technologies are inspirational; they raise the industry to a higher level and allow researchers spend their time, energy and resources on the interpretation of data rather than on the gathering process. Consequently, the role of the researcher is to understand people, and hence the eternal principles of marketing research remain valid even in this new era. Professionals are expected to be courageous in their decisions and to be agile leaders who will be active participants in the transformation process of the discipline.

Consumption is a way of communication whereby consumers express, position or/and differentiate themselves within their society or affiliated groups. A great part of consumers’ lives are spent on various purchase activities, and many would be eager to understand the factors underlying those behaviours.

This chapter primarily deals with the cultural, social, psychological and personal factors that affect consumer behaviour. Each of these factors in relation to consumer behaviour is discussed in detail. The types of consumer buying behaviours and the consumer decision-making processes then provide the fundamentals of the topic along with their relevance to Turkish consumers.

Marketing academics and practitioners have acknowledged that consumers form specific relationships with brands that are able to create unique and memorable qualities. As a result, the concept of consumer–brand relationship has been of great interest for marketers. Indeed, consumer–brand relationships are very complex and multidimensional in nature. A common perception is that brand management should create ultimate offerings and communication to have successful relationships with its consumer base. However, how consumers construe their relationships with brands is mostly out of the brands’ control. It is an emotion-intense realm and necessitates careful study of the consumers as well as the context. After summarising the current literature on brand relationships, we focus on Turkish consumers’ relationships with brands.

By focussing on a range of global and local brand studies, this chapter offers a comprehensive and well-informed analysis of the issues and practices involved in consumer–brand relationships in the Turkish context. The chapter is organised into three parts. The first part focusses on antecedents of consumer–brand relationships such as the global or local identity of the brand and brand personality. The second part presents detailed explorations of various brand relationships such as brand love and brand trust. The third and the final part focusses on an important phenomenon, the stage for various brand relationships, being online brand communities. The chapter concludes with the future research directions in these three main areas together with a discussion of offline and online branding opportunities in the Turkish market.

As a result of accelerating globalisation, competitive dynamics of the world are rapidly changing. Nowadays, both small and large enterprises exist in the same arena, which was not possible before. Similarly, emerging countries have become both markets and competitors for developed countries.

In this chapter, competitive dynamics of Turkey, as an emerging market, will be analysed by evaluating export, import and production volume of the main sectors in Turkey. The concept of competitive positioning and also competitive positioning in emerging markets will be explained. Cases from different industries will be included in order to comprehend the big picture, to understand the competitive dynamics in Turkey and to show the roadmap in management and marketing of these companies. This chapter is planned to be a helpful tool to guide entrepreneurs and managers working in and with Turkish companies to survive and market their products in the Turkish market.

The branding concept has been applied to cities, destinations, regions and even nations to attract tourism, investments and residents. The Republic of Turkey with its rich historical heritage has been home to many applications of such diverse branding campaigns. While some of these campaigns have been criticised for their lack of efficacy, especially at the national level, several city-based or regional campaigns have proven more successful.

In this chapter, we review and examine place branding campaigns in Turkey. We provide examples of the increasing role of social media, cultural and historical heritage, role of movies and TV series, health- and faith-based tourism, mega-sports events, sustainable communications, the Slow City concept and public–private partnerships in contemporary place branding campaigns.

The consumer behaviour literature is evolving towards the assumption that products are inherently experiential bundles, and after all, all businesses are operating within the experienced economy. Experiences are much more advantageous for the consumers because they advance happiness or enjoyment of life (instead of survival or maintenance). Experiential purchases lead to greater happiness levels compared to material purchases. Reliance on materialism and material purchases is shown to be the reason of low happiness levels in even the most affluent countries.

In this chapter, based on theoretical as well as empirical papers, I analyse experiences and the consumption of experiences in the Turkish context. The arguments are supported by up-to-date market analysis of related industries conducted by independent market research agencies. The first section looks at the rise of experientialism in retail industries, such as in the case of shopping malls. The following sections touch upon main experiential categories such as tourism, dining and sports. Finally, the social aspects of experiences are discussed in the context of third-place experiences, and some empirical findings are presented. The chapter concludes with some recommendations for practitioners, experience designers, service providers as well as researchers.

Nowadays companies are constantly changing their retail settings and strategies to keep up with technological developments and consumer needs. Digital transformation enabled one’s shopping experience to be more efficient in terms of money, time, physical effort and other elements that determine the price a consumer has to pay. Channels of communication and distribution have evolved, increased in number and also became integrated. Mobile devices, mobile applications and location services help consumers in their shopping journey. These developments have led us to a new concept called omni-channel management. In theory, the omni-channel refers to a single and unified channel experience with multiple touchpoints, which include physical stores, online stores and direct marketing; mass communication channels (television, radio, print media, C2C, etc.), online channels (social media, search engines, comparison sites, e-mail, display etc.) and mobile channels (SMS, branded apps, etc.). Some examples of omni-channel practices are click-reserve, click-collect, tablets as in-store sales tools, in-store product order through mobile apps, etc.

In this chapter, the latest trends in marketing channels are discussed with enabling digital technologies and relevant success factors. Challenges and opportunities in implementing omni-channel strategies and several omni-channel initiatives from Turkey are reported.

A research was employed to present consumers’ preferences of touchpoints/channels for search, payment and delivery, and to find out the drivers that lead consumers to use more than one channel simultaneously and/or interchangeably in a buying process. The results will guide the readers to understand consumer behaviour in the new omni-channel world.

Marketing has changed rapidly over the last four decades. Not a core discipline itself, its applications have become more complicated, more dynamic and more customised than ever before. Achieving differentiation in product is as difficult as reaching an aurora. Instead, marketers use communication tools to draw attention and increase awareness. But in the era of artificial intelligence, number of communication channels, competitors and lack of patience to read or listen to branded messages are not helping to reach targets. To keep the brands’ images clear and memorable, marketers need to create powerful content to deliver through any touchpoints. And that means INTEGRATION: ‘coordinating the company’s many communication channels to deliver a clear, consistent and compelling message about the organisation and its products’.

The dynamics of marketing communication mix can vary in different geographies. Being a developing country makes Turkey a fast mover but unstable. Although coping with these dynamics is not easy, it could be learnt. This chapter aims to help the reader find some useful information about Integrated Marketing Communication applications in the Turkish market.

This case is about the success of Filli Boya, one of the well-known brands of the Turkish paint industry, on using traditional TV advertisements for creating brand awareness. The purpose of this case study is to point out how TV advertisement, the so-called ‘traditional and boring’ communication tool, could still be effective when integrated into the contemporary marketing philosophy and modern marketing communication trends such as real-time social media marketing.

A qualitative method was applied and both primary and secondary sources of information were used in this study. As primary sources of information, in-depth interviews were conducted. Purposive sampling method was used, and participants were recruited from a sample that was broadly believed to be able to evaluate the brand from different points of view. Interviews were analysed through content analysis using the grounded theory approach. The secondary sources of information, including advertisements and news in media, reports and user contents shared in social media were also used considering the principle of multiple data sources.

Uncovering the contemporary ways of using traditional mass advertising based on a Turkish brand’s experiences, this case could be taken up in advertising courses at both graduate and postgraduate levels when discussing creativity in advertising and also modern integrated marketing communication methods.

People tend to rely on the recommendations of people they know more than any other advertisement medium. Friend-recommendation and online reviews are the primary criteria considered before making most purchase decisions. Increase in the number of media channels, having too many product options to choose from and the massive amount of advertisement pieces lead the way to the success of word of mouth once again. With recent developments in technology and increase in the number of social media tools and users, word-of-mouth marketing (WOMM) became more important than ever. There are many ways to empower positive word of mouth on behalf of corporate brands. The present chapter aims to summarise the key points of WOMM and provide the readers with a roadmap and tools for successful WOMM applications.

This chapter analyses the marketing management practices for the video games industry in Turkey. To identify the extended value chains and define the critical success factors in this local environment, we invited the members of OYUNDER – Game Developers, Designers and Publishers Association in Turkey – to participate in an online survey. The following three main research questions guided this survey: (1) How video game developer companies resolve marketing decisions, decide on their marketing mix and create marketing plans; (2) how they perceive the importance given to marketing in their industry and (3) how they measure and judge the success of their marketing activities. Results indicate that Turkish video game developers are predominantly male and young. They organise and work in small teams. They lack marketing planning as indicated by actualised versus expected revenues and marketing spendings. Only 23.7% of the participants report employing marketing-related staff and their opinions of marketing-related business partners – such as advertising and PR agencies – are negative due to these institutions’ perceived lack of industry experience. The developers mainly use social media channels and digital advertising for their marketing needs. Above-the-line advertising is the least used channel, with content, influencer and below-the-line marketing channels ranging in the middle. They report confidence in managing campaigns for social media, digital marketing and content marketing. However, they believe that they lack the skills to manage above-the-line and below-the-line marketing activities, reporting lack of capital and human resources as the main barriers. Although they believe that marketing can help them reach new customers, they are also afraid to take risks and admit to being conservative in marketing practices.

For the last several decades, technology has been playing an important role in changing the lives of consumers with an unexpected speed of innovative developments. Most of them were disruptive and had shaped not only the behaviour of consumers, but also empowered them to search for better products and services. These changes took place in media, communication, and information management of socialisation and collaboration. The digitisation revolution is a continuum until people and machines embrace a common ground for improving the lives of consumers. There were three stages of this movement. In the first stage, Turkish perspective was in alignment with the world where new channels of communication were established with support of Internet and information management. Marketing technology tools such as customer relationship management and call centre systems were discovered. In the second stage, continuous learning from the best uses and implementations has started. The ultimate goal became total customer satisfaction. Many improvements and innovative services, such as omni-channel marketing, took place for achieving this goal. Today, in the third stage, new marketing tools are being developed on the basis of integrated machine learning, such as analysis of customer conciseness, prediction of behaviour and perceptive marketing, which will be used extensively through digital platforms, new media, social web and in everyday devices for targeted marketing. In this chapter, a broader look is taken and an explanation is made for what has happened through these periods of intersection of marketing science and information technology. Moreover, ongoing changes which have given a new impetus to consumer life are addressed with respect to marketing management literature.

Consumer resistance has been a popular research area in the previous decades, and concepts such as boycotting, brand avoidance, voluntary simplicity and anti-consumption appeared to be hot topics in exploring the ways the consumers resist market dominance in the postmodern culture. However, research on this topic in the Turkish (and partly Eastern) context is very limited, inhibiting our understanding of the topic in different economic and cultural settings. Through a comprehensive discussion that provides institutional-, structural- and community-level perspectives relating to consumer resistance phenomena in Turkey, a developing country with historical and cultural roots in both the East and the West, the chapter intends to equip scholars and practitioners with a better insight to conceptualise this phenomenon as well as to formulate further studies and marketing strategies.

The spending capacity of the middle-income class increases with growing economies. With this increase, luxury goods are not only consumed by rich people alone. For this reason, luxury brands are expanding their target population and enriching their products and services accordingly. Thus, the luxury market which addresses the middle- and upper-middle-income groups is changing and its importance is increasing. In this chapter, the definition of luxury, the classification of luxury goods, the requirements of the luxury marketing mix (product, price, distribution and promotion) and applied strategies are examined. This chapter also covers how luxury products have authentic features, premium and masstige brands, fake luxury products that are the exact copies of original luxury brands, and how and why this fake luxury market grows. At the end of the chapter, the luxury market in Turkey, which has been growing rapidly, especially in recent years, is examined in detail and all the features of the market are presented. It is expected that this market will continue to grow in the future, as a large number of tourists from nearby regions, Central Asia and Arab countries come to Turkey to buy luxury branded products and services.