Determinants of Tourism Product Development in Southeast Ethiopia: Marketing Perspectives

Abstract

Tourism has been given much attention in developing countries like Ethiopia. In this regard, tourism product development played a great role in achieving sustainable developmental goals. The study aims to examine the determinants of tourism product development in southeast Ethiopia. The research employed a mixed research approach, and descriptive and explanatory research design was used. Both secondary and primary data sources were in place to obtain the relevant data. A total of 398 samples were employed to collect the data. A convenience sampling technique was employed to select domestic tourists and walk-in guests and purposive sampling was applied to select marketing managers of hotels, lodges, boat associations, park administration, resorts, restaurants, nightclubs, and guest houses. The qualitative data was analyzed through thematic analysis and the quantitative data was analyzed using descriptive and inferential statistics by computing SPSS. The study revealed that tourism product development is affected by marketing mixes of which promotion was the major factor of tourism product development and price was the only tool inversely related to tourism product development. The brand image also positively determined tourism product development. The results showed that the exercise of tourism product development strategies among tourism businesses was low. The main implication drawn from the study is that the tourism businesses have to develop new customer profiles or segmenting in customers in their specified characteristics like gender, level of income, and age. Furthermore, the need to invest in research and development of the current market to develop new tourism products is of great importance.