Event Marketing as A Form of Cultural Production and Its Relationship with City Marketing: The Case of Selcuklu Congress Center

With the idea that cities can be marketed as products, city administrations are trying to stand out in inter-city competition with their different marketing activities aimed at their target audiences. Cultural production is one of the important areas in which these efforts are concentrated. Symbols in social life are transformed into cultural products by being put into the production process as cultural capital. Similarly, the cultural and historical values of the cities are presented to the target audience as a product. In this way, each city tries to be a center of attraction to attract more visitors and investments. This can be expressed as place marketing and branding. Different forms of tourism are gaining importance in creating attraction for place marketing and branding. M.I.C.E. (Meetings, Incentives, Conferences, Exhibitions) also known as the event sector is one of these types of tourism. Events are seen as a form of cultural production based primarily on experience. Events also lead to renewing the image of the cities, attracting visitors, perceiving the pride and the quality of life of the city residents, increasing social togetherness, and economic viability in many sectors. Event marketing is defined as the process of planning, promoting, organizing and managing in a sustainable manner the fairs, congresses, conferences, exhibitions, festivals and other culture and art activities. One of the important factors for event marketing is convention centers. Providing the necessary spatial infrastructure for the realization of large-scale events, convention centers have become one of the leading actors for city marketing in recent years with the support of other stakeholders in the city. The Selcuk Congress Center, which was built under the auspices of the Selcuk Municipality and became operational on October 29, 2017, changed the face of Konya in as little as 2 years. In addition to its aesthetic appearance, it has shone like a star in a short time with its medium sized meetings and hundreds of culture and art events including concerts given by internationally renowned artists. In this study, the effects of SKM on the culture and art configuration, social and economic relations in Konya were examined. To achieve this, the literature on cultural production, event marketing and city marketing has been utilized. Case study analysis, one of the qualitative research methods, was used. In order to generate data, an unstructured interview was conducted with the General Manager Fatih Kocagüzel who represented the SKM at the highest level. Descriptive and categorical analysis, one of the content analysis methods, was preferred and interpreted for the analysis of the data.