A Glance at the Marketing Mix of Ardabil Province Sport Tourism, from the Perspective of Domestic Tourists

Nowadays, sport tourism has greatly expanded to include a wide range of activities, based on which, by arranging facilities and considering the marketing approaches, this type of tourism can be developed in Iran and in the Ardabil province particularly. Despite the importance of sport tourism, yet no serious study has taken place in this respect in the mentioned province or in Iran at all. Since sport tourism is a new conceptin Iran’s tourism industry and Ardabil province, so the important issue is how to utilize these opportunities and capabilities in a right manner from the marketing perspective. In line of what was said above, in this opportunity, it is attempted to review the sport tourism, and in the meanwhile, to investigate the perspective of domestic sport tourists about sport tourism marketing mix, and to develop an appropriate pattern accordingly. This is a descriptive – survey study, from the research method perspective. Data are gathered through secondary and primary sources. The target population of the study are the domestic tourists who have travelled to Ardebil, Meshkin Shahr and Sar' e Ein cities, which are the major sport tourism centers of Ardebil province. Therefore, aquestionnaire was designed based on the personal and behavioral characteristics of the tourists and the 8 P’s of sport tourism marketing mix; afterwards, the questionnaires were distributed among 110 sport tourists by means of accidental sampling method. Appropriate analysis were made for each of the marketing mix components by utilizingdifferent statistical tests namely, Kolmogrov - Smirnov, Binomial distribution, one sample T- test and Friedman test. In general, results of Friedman test shows that there were weaknesses regarding to thecomponents of “productivity and quality”, “process” and “place andtime” according to priority. Also based on the findings of research amathematical pattern was developed.