Impact of Social Marketing Channels upon Customer’s Loyalty Tourism in Iraq-Case Study

Abstract

The research problem- after many economic crises around the world since many decades; the opportunity to discover novel sources of incomes become a serious issue. Economy in Iraq for many decades considered as “Unilateral Economy” which means that Oil is almost the unique source of income and other kind of incomes were neglected enough such as industry, agriculture and tourism as well. Thus, due to rapid changes around the world & globalization towards having other sources of income rather than Oil especially after many global sounds for renewable energy, sustainable environment; and due to the special geographical region of Iraq, it could be a benefit for enhancing, developing its economy, environment, society if invested in a right way! as happened in other either Arabian or Foreign countries. One of these opportunities is tourism, which considered as a “double-edged sword!” in which it could be an alternative source of income meanwhile it needs high efforts to rehabilitate its infrastructure, use of technologies, developing the mentality towards the importance of this source. The paper adopted Marketing Model called “Branding Pentagram” to analysis and understand the situation of tourism in Iraq meanwhile it serves a framework to develop and improve tourism marketing channels through defining its strategy by answering three main questions that suggested by founder of this model (Baker & Hart in 1999 and cited then by Berg & Pietersma in 2015): who is the product or service for? What does the product or service do? How is it useful to me as a client?  The paper shows that although there are fertile opportunities to invest in tourism sector in Iraq; but for many decades Iraqi environment suffered from many threats that represented by lack of technologies, lack of marketing channels, unqualified tourism skills, political situations and safety as well as the neglecting of tourist’s facilities. On the contrary, recently exactly during Gulf Cup 25 in Basra the image is completely different and it gives a sense of strength towards improving and developing this sector. So, this paper tries to discuss and analysis the challenges and threats of tourism in Iraq