Despite Tajikistan is a tourism region by its historical, cultural, and geographical situation, however, it was not successful in attraction of tourists for lack of an integral planning and lack of a strategic marketing mixture. Experiments of other parts of the world have shown that development of planned tourism industry may satisfy needs of tourists without creating significant problems (Michael, 1989).

Those countries that stepped without planning, en-countered many environmental and social problems. These problems were undesirable for tourists and domestic people and produced marketing problems and decreased economic advantages (Zare et al., 2011). The regions that proceeded without planning for tourism development were not able to compete with the other countries with suitable plans (Gronross, 1982).

Tourism plays an important economical role as one of the invisible export items in many countries. Now, after oil and automobile, tourism is the third export industry of the world (Jefferson and Lickorish, 1991).

Tourism experts anticipated that tourism industry will become the first export industry of the world in early of 21st century. In spite of progressive growth of tourism and its importance in economy of countries, unfortunately, the share of Tajikistan is low; and its reason is unfamiliarity of tourism organizations of Tajikistan with marketing activities, including designing marketing mixture.

Strategic planning of tourism marketing is an important subset of total strategic tourism planning. In this research, we discuss important elements of tourism marketing mixture and specify its variables by view of related experts (Kotler and Gary, 1993).

The main problem to be solved in this research is that there was no strategic marketing mixture model to develop tourism in Tajikistan. This decreases success despite of many competition advantages of this country in its cultural, geographical, and historical dimensions.

Marketing management

 

Before defining “marketing”, we define “market”. This word has been used in different styles. We always discuss retail markets, wholesale markets, domestic markets, national markets, and planning to supply a product to a market. We can define tourism market as customers that need trips and have enough money to do that. Sometimes, this market is limited to a special zone. For example, a restaurant that works in a region may cover near tourism occasionally. In another situation, a market may include a country (a national chain hotel) or many countries (an international airline) (Keegan, 1999).

Awareness for existence of a market for a product will not simplify marketing word. People often think they have enough information about marketing, because they encounter it in their trips. They have stopped in a gas station with suitable traffic signs; they have resided in road hotels; and they have used restaurants with interesting foods. These are forms of propaganda, but marketing is not propaganda. Brochure of a hotel is propaganda but not marketing (Kotler, 1997).

In this section, we offer some definitions for tourism marketing suggested by valid persons or organizations.

England Marketing Institute suggested the following definition (23):

“Marketing is managerial task that organize all commercial activities including evaluation, conversion of customer purchase power to an effective demand for a service or a special good to achieve profit or other goals.”

American Marketing Association defines marketing as (Salah et al., 1976):

“Marketing is a  process  to  plan  and  execute  concepts such as pricing, promotion, distribution of goods, services, and ideas to meet the goals of organization and customers.”

Philip Catler, the most famous expert in this field, has defined marketing as a human activity to meet needs though transaction.

William Stanton, marketing professor in Colorado University, defined marketing as (1996):

“Marketing is a complete business system that is designed for planning, pricing, promotion, and distribution of high quality products to meet needs of goal market to achieve organizational goals.”

Varen Kigan, marketing professor in Pace University of USA, defined marketing as (Keegan, 1999):

“Marketing is the process of concentration of organizational resources and goals on environmental opportunities and needs.”

The above definitions may differ apparently, but they share the following points:

1. Marketing is administration of a company by concentration on needs of customers.

2. In marketing concept, meeting needs of customers is very important, and is the main task to achieve profit goals of a company.

Other tasks such as production, human resources, and financial affairs are done regarding marketing direction. From the operational view, marketing is a thinking method that must be noticed by management and must be the dominant idea in an organization. From the organizational view, duty of marketing department is providing marketing techniques and tools for decision-making. Therefore, marketing is a major task of management and a tool to achieve organization’s goal (Aurkene et al., 1998).

 

Tourism marketing management

Marketing as a concept, as is applied for services and goods, is used in tourism industry. Thus, tourism marketing and general marketing are not different (Seyedahmad et al., 2012).

One of the definitions of marketing in tourism industry is:

“Marketing is philosophy of management to meet needs of tourists, and provides highest profit for an organization by researches, anticipation, and selection of suitable goods and services” (Robert and Morrison, 1992).

The above definition shows that firstly, marketing is a thinking method in a situation to balance tourists’ needs and tourism organizations’ needs. Secondly, this definition notices tourism researches to select goal markets. Thirdly, situation stabilization and goods life curve concepts are used to ensure supply of services and goods in tourism industry and to design desired marketing strategies and suitable programs.Krippendorf suggested the following definition in “Tourism Marketing” book:

“Marketing is using systematic policies of tourism institutes and countries in national and international levels to meet needs of a definite group of consumers to achieve suitable profit” (Stephen and Luiz, 1994).

This definition complies with the previous ones for general marketing to meet needs of consumers as the final goal of companies.

 

Tourism marketing mixture

Marketing mixture is a major concept in the modern marketing. Marketing mixture is a set of controllable marketing tools to do suitable reactions in the goal market (Zare and Shahsavari, 2012).

Marketing mixture includes all efforts and activities of a company to affect demand. Its different features have been classified by marketing experts.

McCarty (1960) described 4 main elements of marketing including product, price, promotion, and place (4P). Most marketing management experts accept “4P” and its elements. However, some researchers added other elements.

Middleton added three other elements of people, physical evidence, and process, so he called it “7P”.

Mill and Morrison added elements of people, packaging, partnership, and programming, so they called it “8P”.

Gronros added element of interaction (1982). Doswell added element of picture as the fifth element. According to Doswell, general picture of the region is a mental picture including place, nature, and views of people. General picture is produced during time, and history is effective cultural factors, fictions, and epics.

As mentioned above, there is solidarity for four main elements of marketing mixture. In this research, only theoretical fundamentals of marketing mixture principle were noticed and primary data for Tajikistan market were gathered in that regard (Kotler and Armstrong, 1994) (Figure 1).

 

3. The degree of emotional engagement of tourists for trip purchases and their effects on their satisfaction.

Findings of this research showed that tourists’ satisfaction is related with operational equivalence and value equi-valence. For relative power of operational equivalence and value equivalence to describe dissatisfaction of tourism, it was found that operational equivalence could better determine tourists’ satisfaction than value equivalence. In addition, it was found that emotional engagement of tourists in purchase process affected satisfaction of them for a destination region. This research concluded that value equivalence approach affects increment of knowledge of tourism marketing.

In addition, this research proposed self-thinking and equivalence of destination region in satisfaction process (Matheson, 1976). Laksitanond Prin from International University, USA, defended his thesis in 1989 titled “A comparison between different aspects of Thailand tourism marketing from the view of tourism managers, propaganda managers, and five different tourist groups”. In this research, firstly, domains of different types of tourism propaganda from the view of tourism and propaganda managers were studied. In addition, domain of each type was analyzed. The results showed that there were 9 important propaganda contents by view of tourism and propaganda managers. Thus, world marketing approach can be used for them. There was a difference in one propaganda message between perceptions of two groups (Jefferson and Lickorish, 1991).

Burke James Franklin from Minnesota University in 1986 defended his PhD thesis titled “Designing a computer system for management and evaluation of tourism marketing programs”. This research was about development of a tourism computer system with co-operation of a company in Wisconsin State. The studies of Tourism Department of Wisconsin State showed that the number of tourists in this region was decreasing. In this study, they tried to improve management and evaluation of tourism marketing programs by computer technology.

A national survey of tourism organizations showed that evaluation of marketing and management databases could play and important role in general development. In this research, a computer system for management of produced information of tourism marketing sectors and evaluation of efficacy of tourism marketing programs was designed. These two areas are not well noticed in tourism marketing process (Horner and John, 1996).

 

Research assumptions

Main assumption

Among   four   marketing  mixture  elements,  promotional activities and distribution channels are most important factors in attraction of foreign tourists.

 

Sub-main assumptions

Sub-main assumption 1: Among goods and services variables, historical works, internal security, and hospitality-trained staff are the most important factors for attraction of foreign tourists.

Sub-main assumption 2: Among price variables, suitability of residence facilities, increment of prices during tourism season and decrement during nontourism season, and equal official prices of hotels are the most important factors for attraction of foreign tourists.

Sub-main assumption 3 : Among promotion variables, oral propaganda of satisfied tourists, displaying documented films from tourism attractions of Tajikistan in TVs of goal market, and propaganda in TVs of goal market are the most important factors for attraction of foreign tourists.

Sub-main assumption 4 : Among distribution channels variables, deletion of excess formalities for entrance of tourists, suitability of airline facilities, and establishment of tourism offices in goal markets are the most important factors for attraction of foreign tourists.