Employing local marketing in tourism development at Ben Tre province

“The EUrASEANs: journal on global socio-economic dynamics” Volume 5 (12); September-October, Year 2018; ISSN 2539 – 5645 (Print) Copyright © 2018, [The EUrASEANs] on-line access: https://www.euraseans.com/5(12) Ai Tran Huu PhD, lecturer of Faculty of Economics, Van Hien University, Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam Research interests – markets of agricultural products, SMEs functioning and government support, organic food markets, ecological economics, environmental issues of economic development and corporate social responsibility Published more than 50 papers in International journals, member of editorial board of International journals E-mail: aith@vhu.edu.vn Nguyen Minh Thi Lê MBA, Lecturer of Faculty of Economics, Van Hien University,Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam Research interests: SMEs functioning and government support, consumer behavior, innovative products markets and finances. Published more than 20 papers in International journals. E-mail: nguyenltm@vhu.edu.vn. EMPLOYING LOCAL MARKETING IN TOURISM DEVELOPMENT AT BEN TRE PROVINCE Ai Tran Huu Nguyen Le Thi Minh Van Hien University, Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam Local marketing is becoming an important factor in the development strategy of each industry, each locality, and each country. The official survey was conducted with 302 survey samples from managers, deputy directors, deputy department heads, department heads upward at local tourism businesses of Ben Tre province. This paper presents a study of the local marketing situation, thereby identifying the factors affecting the local marketing situation in order to provide some suggestions for local marketing strategies for tourism development in Ben Tre province. Keywords: Local marketing, development strategy, Ben Tre province, Vietnam Introduction Localities today must be self-motivated as a market-oriented business. Leaders need to know how to build their locality into a compelling product, and at the same time need to know how to effectively market the characteristics of this "product" to their target markets. Marketing strategies require not only the customer's needs but also the in-depth understanding of the customer's decision-making processes to have appropriate solutions to attract customers to the local. "Future local development does not depend on geographic location, climate, natural resources. The future of local development depends on the expertise, skills, human qualities and "local" organizations (Philip Kotler). Many countries have applied the theory of local marketing to build brands, positioning images based on effective marketing strategies and programs such as Thailand, Singapore and South Korea. The localities of Vietnam are also interested in marketing activities to promote images, attract tourists such as Quang Ninh, Da Nang, Ho Chi Minh City. Marketing The EUrASEANs: journal on global socio-economic dynamics, № 5 (12), 2018 75 can play an important role in the socio-economic development strategy, and each locality needs to build its own local marketing strategy to promote its own strengths. When it comes to local marketing, people often refer to the brand because this is the basic unit for Marketing, can now see a local or a country is a brand called local brands. Ben Tre is a province in the Mekong Delta, known as the homeland of the Dong Khoi Revolution and a land of the Coconut. Ben Tre province is located at the end of the Mekong River, so Ben Tre province has many canals and canals. Besides coconuts, Ben Tre province also has many orchards scattered in many districts, most of which are located in Cho Lach and Chau Thanh districts. Go to Ben Tre province, you should participate in ecotourism activities, stay in the family of local people, and enjoy the fresh air. With these advantages, Ben Tre province needs to develop local marketing strategies to develop tourism. The result of this activity will help Ben Tre province locate and advertise its image to tourists and investors inside and outside the country, quickly becoming a province that thrives on tourism. Literature Review Local marketing core concept According to Philip Kotler et al. (2002), local marketing is a term used to collect local action programs to improve local competitiveness and economic development. Marketing activities will create local characteristics, a new image to combine with natural factors such as geographic location and natural resources, thereby enhancing the competitiveness and attractiveness with local customers. Local marketing consists of three main subjects: the government, the business community and the public. The government and its line agencies play a key role in issuing and implementing local planning policies, building an attractive environment as well as creating a reputation for local products myself. The entity that makes local products attractive to customers is the business community, which, besides creating jobs, contributing to the budget, also supports the government in carrying out its public service activities. However, all guidelines and policies of the government have been successfully implemented with the support of local people. Although not directly involved in the issuance of local marketing programs, indirect support for these activities is easier and more convenient. Local marketing clients include four main groups: tourists, investors, residents - laborers and export markets. They are the ones who bring to the local community certain benefits and values such as income from services, employment, capital, science and technology, and professional qualifications. Therefore, the locality needs to meet the needs and desires of its customers, provide the best services, incentives, and safe and stable living environment to attract and retain customers. To do this, local marketers need to identify and select target customers based on the mobilization and efficient use of their resources and need to implement local marketing strategies. Local marketing Ben Tre - an effective strategy for sustainable development Building a local marketing strategy is one that promote the specific characteristics of their own to attract the markets and customers you want to target, so it must be based on the criteria of investor and customer focus center. Competition among localities is not only the quality of products and cheap prices, but also the policy-based competition, the devotion and EMPLOYING LOCAL MARKETING IN 76 professionalism of the state apparatus, the attitude of civilized behavior the people, the reputation of entrepreneurs and the brand of the business. The content that needs to be researched and analyzed to provide a practical basis for sustainable tourism development must be identified based on the principles and elements for sustainable tourism development. Building local marketing strategies include: Local Image Marketing Strategies: Local imagery is an aggregation of beliefs, ideas, and impressions about a locality. Local marketing strategy: Image promotion is not enough to increase the attractiveness of the locality. Customers need to know the specific location, clear. Infrastructure Marketing Strategies: Infrastructure enhances image and local appeal including roads, urban areas, apartment buildings, utilities and communications networks. Human marketing strategy: It is the promotion of the locality through celebrities, reputable leaders, talents, mentally motivated people or those who have moved to the local. Local authorities can conduct surveys and re-evaluate the human resources in tourism from which to propose the most suitable solution to improve the quality of this team. The basic contents to be analyzed include: - Tourism resources: is the basic factor for tourism development. The sustainable development of tourism depends very much on the potential, method and efficiency of exploitation as well as the responsibility to preserve those resources for subsequent generations. - The environment is a particularly important factor for the development of tourism. Unlike many other economic sectors, in the process of developing a two-way relationship between the environment and tourism activities is very tight, so the deterioration of the environmental quality will lead to a decrease in the attractiveness of the environment tourism products, which directly affect the sustainable tourism development. - The current status and impact of international economic integration on tourism development in Ben Tre province is a content that needs to be analyzed and evaluated through factors that determine the issues for development lasting. Important factors to consider include: tourism market; Revenue (social income), value added tourism; Tourism products, Policies to support tourism development, Investment for development, Human resources for development. - Model of sustainable tourism development: through a specific analysis of the typical model of tourism development in comparison with the theoretical models of sustainable tourism development to draw on the remaining problems. In the development of tourist sites and resorts in Ben Tre province. This will be an important basis for proposing a rational model that is appropriate to specific conditions in Ben Tre province. Research methodology A questionnaire was set up to interview experts on the importance of factors affecting the marketing of local business in Ben Tre province. There were 30 people interviewed, leaders of enterprises, experts in trade, economists. Through qualitative research, we can identify the four most important factors. The sample size is determined by the formula: n ≥ m * 5, where m is the number of items, m = 10 (Bollen, 1989). The formal study was conducted by means of quantitative research that was conducted as soon as the questionnaire was modified from qualitative research, which interviewed leaders and managers. Management of small and medium enterprises, including: director, deputy director, business department The EUrASEANs: journal on global socio-economic dynamics, № 5 (12), 2018 77 leader, export department, marketing department, experienced specialists. The interview was conducted in accordance with the following procedures: telephone contact, then send questionnaire, exchange interview and answer questions about interview subjects are unclear. Results with 302 valid votes. The study used the Likert scale for evaluation from 1 to 5 . The main method used for data analysis was a comparative statistical method and descriptive statistics based on SPSS 23.0 software and using analytical techniques such as scale reliability testing, exploratory analysis ( EFA), assayed analysis (CFA) and linear structural analysis (SEM). Model and hypothesis of research Research hypothesis Attracting investors and business: Desire to attract business, industrial and economic investment. This is the group of customers with the longest history and also create the hottest market today. Investors are becoming more professional in finding and selecting the right locales. When considering a locality, investors are often interested in issues, including: Local Development Strategies, Comparison of Operating Conditions and Costs, Comparative Business Tax, Labor Market Assessment, real estate research, motivational assessments, negotiation and even project management. Thus, the hypothesis H1 is expressed: H1: Attract investors and businesses have a positive impact on the local marketing situation. Attracting tourists: Customers in this group are divided into two main groups: business guests and tourists. For local marketers, it is important to meet these two distinct customer groups. Traveler travelers gather in an area to attend meetings or business conferences, travel somewhere, or sell and buy, visit somewhere; The tourists want to visit family, friends. The research focus on the application of local marketing to develop tourism, so research focused on the main target tourists. The target audience for local marketing is not only the current number of tourists, but also the experience of the locals, but also the visitors who have never experienced, visited or entertained. Thus, the H2 hypothesis is: H2: Attracting tourists has a positive effect on the local marketing situation Attract local merchandise export: This creates tremendous leverage, a marketing tool that does not take too much time and effort, as local goods are recognized around the world. The issue of local goods exports in the trend of integration and development of globalization today is of great interest, the introduction of local products to the world, is to bring a brand, bring a faith to the world, therefore, more appropriate strategies and steps are needed to promote the export of local products. Thus, the H3 hypothesis is: H3: Attracting local merchandise export has a positive impact on the local marketing situation. Attracting local residents: It is very important to attract people who are very important to a local area, to retain talents and to train local people to develop them. Therefore, localities EMPLOYING LOCAL MARKETING IN 78 are building their own strategies to attract local residents to live and work. Thus, the hypothesis H4 is set: H4: Attracting local residents has a positive influence on the local marketing situation. Discussion results The research model extracted from the relevant models abroad to measure the factors affecting the local marketing situation when applied to a specific case in Ben Tre should be re-tested reliability needed or not. Cronbach apha confidence factor scores. Table 1 shows that the Cronbach's alpha coefficients for all scales are greater than 0.7, and the coefficients of variation-some are greater than 0.4. All scales are then used in the next EFA analysis and regression (Nunnally & Burnstein, 1994). Table 1. Test results on Cronbach's Alpha scales (Source: compiled by the author) N 0 Scale N of Items Corrected Item- Total Correlation Cronbach's Alpha if Item Deleted 1 Attracting Investors And Business (AIB) 5 0,815 0,566 2 Attracting Local Export Business (ALEB) 4 0,882 0,541 3 Attract Tourists (AT) 4 0,954 0,629 4 Attract Local Residents (ALR) 4 0,843 0,625 5 Local Marketing Situation Province Of Ben Tre (LMSP) 4 0,744 0,468 Confirming factor analysis (CFA): The correlation coefficient between the components with accompanying standard deviation (Table 1) shows us these coefficients are less than 1 (with statistical significance). Therefore, the components: Attracting Investors And Business (AIB), Attracting Local Export Business (ALEB), Attract Tourists (AT), Attract Local Residents (ALR) are worth distinguishing. Regarding the relevance general, linear structural analysis shows this valuable model chi-squared statistic is 217.814 with 120 degrees of freedom and the value of p = 0.000. Chi-squared relative degrees of freedom according Cmin/df was 1.815 < 2). Other indicators such as GFI = 0.923 (> 0.9), TLI = 0.971 (> 0.9), CFI = 0.978 (> 0.9) and RMSEA= 0.054 (<0.08). Therefore, this model fits the data collected. This also allows draw individual judgments about the direction of the observed variables. About values converge, the standardized weights of the scales are > 0.5 with statistical significance p < 0.05, so the scale achieved the convergence value. The EUrASEANs: journal on global socio-economic dynamics, № 5 (12), 2018 79 Table 2. Results of testing the value of distinguishing between the components of the scale (Source: compiled by the author) Correlation Estimate S.E. C.R. P AIB ALR .083 .026 3.163 .002 AIB ALEB .085 .022 3.782 *** AIB LMSP .081 .024 3.453 *** AIB AT .139 .026 5.298 *** ALR ALEB .134 .024 5.517 *** ALR LMSP .222 .029 7.581 *** ALR AT .146 .027 5.496 *** ALEB LMSP .089 .021 4.329 *** ALEB AT .112 .022 4.997 *** LMSP AT .130 .024 5.355 *** Results of the Confirmatory Factor Analysis CFA) Figure 2. Result from the relational CFA (Source: compiled by the author) Results of the Structural Equation Model (SEM) The model structure (SEM) has been developed to explore the relationship between Attracting Investors And Business (AIB), Attracting Local Export Business (ALEB), Attract Tourists (AT), Attract Local Residents (ALR) have been implemented. EMPLOYING LOCAL MARKETING IN 80 The results show that the final calibration model with statistically significant chi-square is 227.395 with 120 degrees of freedom (P = 0.000), the relative degree of freedom of the mean square of Cmin / df =1.895 (0.9), TLI = 0.969 (> 0.9), CFI = 0.975 (> 0.9) and RMSEA = 0.056 (<0.08). Therefore, this model has achieved compatibility with the data collected. Figure 2.Result from the relational structure in the final model (SEM) (Source: compiled by the author) Table 3. Results of estimation relationships local marketing (Source: compiled by the author) Regression Weights Estimate S.E. C.R. P LMSP <--- AIB .060 .047 1.284 .199 LMSP <--- ALR .470 .058 8.045 *** LMSP <--- ALEB .006 .066 .088 .930 LMSP <--- AT .131 .052 2.534 .011 Conclusions and recommendations The result estimates in Table 3 of the theoretical modeling of factors related to local marketing have only to two components: (1) Attract Local Residents (ALR), (2) Attract Tourists (AT), (statistically significant (p ≤ 0.05), components: Attracting Local Export Business (ALEB) (p = 0.930); Attracting Investors and Business (AIB) (p = 0.199); This shows that Ben Tre province attracts residents from other provinces to live and work and help develop local culture. It also attracts tourists, this is the resources to help the province The EUrASEANs: journal on global socio-economic dynamics, № 5 (12), 2018 81 develop and create jobs for local people. However, Ben Tre province needs to set policies and conditions attractive investment to attract more investors and business. From there, it helps to export local goods to domestic and foreign markets. The results of the survey on enterprises' average value show that the average score is not high. This shows that the local marketing situation in Ben Tre needs to improve. Increasing the situation of local goods export marketing in Ben Tre Aquaculture products are dependent on natural conditions, seasonality, high risk and price fluctuations. Should this source of funding be diversified in mobilization, from the state budget, enterprises, from the people, from ODA, foreign direct investment and other sources of capital in accordance with the law in Vietnam. Export products are of high quality, meeting the requirements of the international market as well as contributing to improving the competitiveness of aquatic products. To advise on guiding and directing solutions in export work in order to reach the set targets. To exploit and mobilize to the utmost the local commodities with the competitive advantages of the province for export and at the same time develop new export commodities with added value and limit the export of crude products. Strengthening support for enterprises, production and business establishments in the province to expand the export market, create prestige in the market, take initiative in the process of integration into the world economy. Enterprises must enhance market research and research to create products that meet market demands and are competitive. At the same time, actively and more actively in export marketing, it is necessary to develop an export marketing plan annually and at the same time allocate funds for export marketing activities closely linked to business associations, industry associations to take advantage of the support, make the most of every opportunity that the state promotion agency for businesses. In order to implement effective export marketing programs, businesses should actively seek prior information about the market, product preparation, introductory publications, marketing personnel, contact with customers..., how to bring the most effective after participating in export marketing programs. Increase the marketing status of local characteristics These are the highlights for local high-value tourists. These highlights can be attributed to nature, history, or local history. Ben Tre has long coastline, beautiful beaches, green water, attractive to tourists near and far, bringing Ben Tre out of the "oasis", quickly integrating with the provinces of the Mekong Delta, creating momentum. To develop socio-economic aspects and ensure security and defense for the entire region. Increasing local marketing situation in Ben Tre infrastructure The convenient transportation system in Ben Tre is one of the major factors to attract tourists. Unlike big cities in the two countries, Ben Tre does not have traffic jam is a very EMPLOYING LOCAL MARKETING IN 82 attractive element of Ben Tre. The new bridges linking many provinces in the Mekong Delta create favorable conditions for the farmers. In addition, the power supply and drainage systems are invested. The communication system has been completed and put into operation. Therefore, the city needs a strategy to protect, renovate and upgrade its infrastructure while promoting its infrastructure. Increasing the local marketing situation of Ben Tre people Ben Tre people are simple, straight, simple life, friendship, love the truth and resolute in action against the evil, the bad. Ben Tre people friendly, friendly, hospitable are an attractive element of this locality. Raising public awareness of attitudes and cultural behavior towards tourists is an activity that should enhance current practice. 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Butterworth-Heinemann, Oxford Paper submitted 08 May 2018 Paper accepted for publishing 21 June 2018 Paper published online 30 September 2018