Management of natural values and social marketing: The case of Atatürk Arboretum

Abstract

The values that society attributes to nature and forests are constantly diversified. These values can be in the form of products and services, sometimes only in the form of thought or change. Today, humanity has scientifically discovered the importance of non-use values such as bequest, option and existence values, but has not socialized these values and made them a part of contemporary life. All protected areas, Arboretums, herbariums and botanical gardens especially are the most suitable places to improve social awareness about natural values. Physical arrangements are not enough to create the expected awareness, special programs should be prepared to provide targeted social change. In many areas and especially by non-profit organizations, social marketing approach is used as a useful approach to prepare social changing programs. The purpose of this study is to examine Ataturk Arboretum that Turkey’s first under the social marketing concept and to develop recommendations on the basis of social marketing mix components. In the traditional marketing activities, the target markets can be addressed with a marketing mix consisting of Product, Price, Promotion and Place components (4P), in the social marketing approach, the Public, Policy, Partnership and Fund Raising components (8P) should be designed in addition to these components. In this study, the existence of social marketing mix in Atatürk Arboretum was investigated. It was found out that such an understanding was not implemented, but it was found that social marketing could be done within the scope of all components of 8P, and suggestions were developed to help design new programs.

Keywords

• nature consciousness
• awareness
• nonprofit marketing
• social marketing
• social change
• doğa bilinci
• farkındalık
• kâr amaçsız pazarlama
• sosyal pazarlama
• toplumsal değişim