THE FACTORS AFFECTING PRICING STRATEGIES IN TOURISM ESTABLISHMENTS A FIELD STUDY IN SOUTHEASTERN ANATOLIA REGION IN TURKEY

Pricing is considered to be one of the most important marketing tools in sales and sales promotion. Pricing is also one of the important topics that businesses should be careful about if they want to have an edge over their rivals in the market. Pricing is a process controlled by business itself. There are internal and external factors pricing depends on. Internal factors are: marketing strategies, cost structure and cost decision mechanisms. External factors are; market and demand structure, product price of opponents, chain of distribution and legal legislation. This study aims to determine the factors affecting prices of products and pricing strategies of businesses. In this study, exploratory research was used so as to determine the pricing strategies of 4 and 5 star hotels operating in the Southeastern Region of Anatolia. As a result of the analyses, the most important factor affecting pricing was found out to be costs.

I S S N 2 2 7 8 -5 6 1 2 V o l u m e 1 1 N u m b e r 2 I n t e r n a t i o n a l J o u r n a l o f M a n a g e m e n t a n d I The study shows that students have high level of price sensitivity. Doan et al. (2011) expresses that queue time should be zero for all departments in optimal assignments system. Maglaras and Meissier(2006) mentione that revenue management problems can be reduced via common formulation. In this case, firms keep their resource capacity under control for all products. Moreover, Henterhuber (2008) claims that businesses need to pay attention to the value based pricing strategies. Yıldıztekin (2005) explains that pricing strategies are applied in order to maintain the continuity and to reduce uncertainties of company.
Met and Oktay (2011) say that customer behaviors should be examined closely even after products, services and price options are presented and adjustments should be made continuously. Also, Yıldırım (2015) mentions that businesses using competition based pricing strategies need to reflect their savings which they make by promotions.

1.FACTORS AFFECTING PRICING
Factors affecting pricing can be examined under six titles.

1.1.Cost
One of the most important factors affecting pricing is production and market costs of products. Cost is not only an important factor in pricing but it also is a very important criterion for businesses to prevail upon their rivals in competition in markets.
Three factors of production; natural resources, labor and capital also apply to production of touristic goods and services. Capital cost is the cost of monetary resources like fixed and business capital. Natural resources cost consist of costs depending on the location tourism management (İçöz, 2001:313).
The rate of costs directly affects the demand for price of touristic products. In conclusion, costs determine decisions of tourism establishments and their status against their rivals and the market share.
There are two kinds of costs in tourism establishments; fixed-cost and variable cost (Ünsal, 2000:248). Fixed-costs are independent from the level of output (Ünsal, 2000: 48).
Wages of senior managers are made up of expanses like insurance, land taxes, communication expanses and maintenance and repair expanses. With the increase in the production rate of tourism products the amount of fixed-cost per production decreases.

1.1.Competition
To define competition in general we can say that it is the fight among businesses who want to sell goods or services to consumers (Bingol, 2005: 336).
In tourism sector prices should be in a level in which companies can compete in the market (Becerra et al., 2013: 73). With the intention of finding a way to deal with rivals" strategies, market place and rivals should be examined carefully (Kothandaraman and Wilson, 2001: 381).
To be able to survive increasingly fierce competition conditions, tourism companies minimize their costs and maximize their incomes. Hence, tourism companies take all these factors affecting costs and incomes into consideration before deciding on a price (Didin and Köroğlu, 2008:113).

1.1.Judicial Factors
Laws and regulations are the things to be considered in assigning prices. Governments may interfere in the prices of tourism companies either directly or indirectly via local governments. The Ministry of Culture and Tourism assigns the sub and up limits for room prices in accommodation companies (Kozak, 2010:179). Hotel managements need to inform the Ministry of Culture and Tourism about the prices they prepare for regular customers and they need to comply with the prices for a year. These prices are called board prices. Prices applied for customers who are brought by travel agencies or tour operators are, on the other hand, called exceptional prices (İçöz, 2001: 324).

1.1.Demand and Market Structure
It is essential for tourism companies to determine all kinds of demands for their goods and services. To do that, companies should first conduct a market research to identify preferences and income levels of target market mass (Collings &Parsa, 2006:94).
Pricing takes place after assessing all the factors related to target market. Evaluations about the relationship between demand and price should be considered when deciding on a pricing strategy.
Different market structures may have different demand-price elasticity. That is, different consumer groups may react in a different way to price changes. I S S N 2 2 7 8 -5 6 1 2 V o l u m e 1 1 N u m b e r 2 I n t e r n a t i o n a l J o u r n a l o f M a n a g e m e n t a n d I

1.1.Factors depending on Distribution Channels
The length of distribution channels used by tourism companies has an effect on pricing control. In tourism markets, consumers go to the places where tourism products are available, not the other way around. Thus, mediators in distribution channels try to bring the consumer to where products are (Kozak, 2010b: 178).

1.1.Consumer Behaviors
Consumers" sense of quality, their experiences and behaviors are among the factors affecting pricing (Andrlic&Ruzic, 2010: 694). It is stated that, thanks to consumer behaviors, product range has been widened to the ones which are interesting and intriguing (Baumol, 2004: 239).
Low prices may imply costumers that the product is unqualified (Yükselen, 2010:262). Prices of substitute goods and services should also be considered before starting the pricing process. Price and income elasticity rate of tourism products are generally high. It is said that when pricing is done without considering this information, consumer demands may change towards other goods and services since tourism products are luxurious (Schütze, 2003: 44).
What consumers want is to be able to benefit from tourism products in accordance with their budget. In this case, pricing is done considering consumers" budget while maximizing profit at the same time. Tourism demand occurs in both national and international level (Pellinen, 2003:221).

Aim
The purpose of this study is to convey the views hotel managers of 4-5 star hotels in Southeastern Anatolia, a region rich with historical, natural and cultural places, about pricing strategies in the scope of marketing mix.

Scope
Population of the study consists of 4 and 5 star hotels operating in Southeastern Region of Anatolia and have tourism operation license. There are 30 hotel managements in total; 19 of them are 4 star hotels and 11 of them are 5 star hotels. There was no sample chosen for this study and all of the hotels were dealt with as a mass. 30 questionnaires were conducted face to face with accounting and marketing managers.

Methodology
In order to determine the pricing strategies in tourism sector in Southeastern Anatolia, exploratory research method was used. So far there has not been done a research regarding pricing strategies of 4 & 5 star hotels in Southeastern Anatolia that we know of.
Managers of 4-5 star hotels were visited one by one for questionnaires. E-mail or other communication tools were not preferred in case of not getting any return. Also, face-to-face interviews were very efficient to get answers for the questions related to average prices and occupancy rates. For the sake of reliability of the study, one and one interviews were thought to be effective.
Sample was not used in this study, instead the data collected directly from the whole population of the study. Therefore, the results represent the population as a whole. There are 16 items related to pricing strategies in the questionnaire. 5 point likert scale was used to acquire answers.

Data Analysis Tool
We used SPSS package software and Excel. Descriptive statistics were used to analyze the data.

RESULTS
With the help of SPSS 22.00, results below were acquired. Demographical features of participants are given in Table 1,2 and 3.       Table 4 shows the distribution of participants by their positions in workplace. 22 (73,3%) of participants are in marketing department while 8 (26,7%) of them work in accounting. We see that most of the participants work in the marketing department. The rates of consideration of cost-based pricing as a pricing strategy are shown in Table 5 above. 29 (96,7%) of hotels usually/always, only 1 (3,3%) hotel sometimes consider cost-based pricing strategy. That is, all of the hotels use costbased pricing strategy. The usage rate of demand-based pricing strategy is shown in Table 6. According to the results, 27 (90,0%) hotels usually/always, 3 (10%) hotels sometimes use demand-based pricing strategy. I S S N 2 2 7 8 -5 6 1 2 V o l u m e 1 1 N u m b e r 2 I n t e r n a t i o n a l J o u r n a l o f M a n a g e m e n t a n d I  Distribution of consideration rate of competition-based pricing is given in Table 7. It can be seen that 15 (50%) hotels usually/always, 14 (46,7%) hotels sometimes, 1 (3,3%) hotel seldom/never consider competition-based strategy. In the study, participants are asked to rate the importance of factors affecting pricing strategies from 1 to 7. Table 8 shows the results.
Considering these results, it can be said that the most important factor in pricing strategies is costs (100%).

DISCUSSION AND CONSLUSION
This survey is conducted with 30 managers, 29 of which are male and 1 of them is female. In other words, most of the managers are males in hotel managements in Southeast Anatolia as they are in any other sector in Turkey. Ages of the participants range from 35 to 44 with the average of 39.
Tourism sector is a dynamic one and therefore, we can infer that hotels choose young people as their managers for this reason. Moreover, the average year of professional experience was found out to be 9 years.
When we look at the educational backgrounds of participants almost 93 % (n=28) of them had bachelor"s degree and 7 % (n=2) of them had graduate education. As it is important in every other field, employing people with good educational backgrounds in tourism sector is very important with regards to contributing to the establishment. It is also vital for the sector in need of making strategic decisions.
As a result of this study it can be seen that nearly all of the hotels in Southeastern Anatolia pay regard to cost-based and demand-based pricing strategies. Furthermore, competition-based pricing strategy is usually taken into consideration as a part of pricing policy of the hotels.
When managers were asked give numbers in order of importance from 1 (the most important) to 7 (the least important) about the factors affecting pricing, costs were ranked number 1, product value for customers ranked number, rivals ranked number 3, demand and supply ranked number 4, market structure ranked number 5, judicial factors ranked number 6 and finally mediators ranked number 7. Costs are seen as the most important factor whereas mediators are considered as the