Mobile marketing communication in tourism: a case study from Turkey

Abstract

In recent years mobility has played important role in our life as a natural consequence of rapid changes in technology. Mobile devices are indispensable for our life like that mobile phones standing first on the list and also laptop computer, tablet PCs, PDAs. Mobile marketing applications began to affect consumers day to day more, while the impact of mobile devices continues to grow in the field of marketing which become a part of our lives now and in our daily lives. As a result of technological developments, the methods of collecting data in marketing research develop day by day. The use of mobile phone in marketing researches takes shape in accordance with attributes of the phone; the culture of mobile phone users, the number of them, government rules and procedures. Prompted by highly publicised over-optimistic predictions of future success of mobile marketing (cf. Leppäniemi and Karjaluoto 2005) and the success stories of mobile marketing campaigns (e.g. Enpocket 2003), academic research on mobile marketing is snowballing. While prior research have provided useful insights into mobile marketing (e.g. Facchetti et al. 2005; Leppäniemi et al. 2006; Barnes 2002; Yunos et al. 2003; Kavassalis et al. 2003), our understanding of the mobile marketing strategy formulation and implementation remains deficient. The main aim of this article is to focus on the usage of mobile marketing communications applications in Turkey. The paper is constituted on the results of a survey conducted in Samsun which is a province of Turkey in Black Sea Region. Therefore it is intended to highlight the diversities of usage of Mobile marketing communication applications in Turkey. The differences in the mobile application is expected to shed light on future research in the field of mobile marketing.