Designing and Explaining the Ethnic Marketing Model of Foreign Tourists Case study: Tehran Metropolis

Ethnic tourism is one of the types of tourism that is done to observe the lifestyle of local indigenous people. The purpose of this type of tourism is to understand the culture, customs, religion, type of clothing, language or dialect, spirits, food and quality of accommodation and many other cases. It is about different tribes and nomads. Having multiple ethnic groups can be considered as a positive opportunity and characteristic for a tourism destination, provided that proper management, security, culture, competitiveness, principled and professional marketing. Because tourism is very important in the global economy and is an important source of foreign exchange earnings for countries, as it accounts for a large part of planning and investment in the current world. The high priority given to ethnicity and ethnic groups reflects the potential marketing opportunities offered by ethnic marketing for businesses in advanced economies and tourism development, and due to the growing trend of tourism and the desire of more tourists to get acquainted with the ethnicities of other countries, it is expected to take advantage of these potential opportunities. Meanwhile, the city of Tehran as the capital of Iran due to its administrative-political centrality and the existence of more facilities and resources as an immigrant city of all different ethnicities and races throughout the country. This can become an opportunity for ethnic tourism in the city, despite the problems. But looking at ethnic diversity in the city, the problem is that a new concept of ethnic tourism marketing that responds to this diversity has not been specifically addressed in the tourism marketing literature. Given the above and the purpose of the research, the main question is as follow: What is the ethnic marketing model for foreign tourists?

The present research is an applied one in terms of purpose and descriptive-analytical in aspect of content. The method of data collection is the predominant method of library and field and with the help of questionnaires. This research has used the literature on the subject and the meta-combination method, as well as expert surveys using a questionnaire and the Delphi technique. In this regard, the 10-member list of academic experts as well as 10 managers and specialists in the field of tourism   were selected. For the validity of the questionnaire, the groupof experts who helped in answering the questionnaire was used and for the reliability of the questionnaire, the Cronbach's test method was exerted. The obtained value from this test was 0.821, which shows the correlation between the questions. Kendall agreement coefficient was exploited to agree on the poll.After defining the dependent and independent variables, a researcher-made questionnaire was designed and the validity of the final research model was tested by using of structural equation modeling using PLS software program.

After the reliability of the questionnaire in the first stage, Delphi has been equal to 0.937 and because it is higher than 0.7, it is acceptable. The Delphi questionnaire was administered in three rounds and in three time periods. In the first round, since all the proposed factors were somehow the same as those presented in previous studies, no new factors were added to the research at this stage. In the second round, the reliability of the questionnaire was equal to 0.889. Also, Kendall coordination coefficient, which is to check the consensus of opinions, was calculated by SPSS, which is equal to 0.12. In the third round of Delphi, Kendall coordination coefficient was calculated for the questionnaire, which is equal to 0.137. In the third round of Delphi, in all indicators, at least 90% of the respondents considered the indicators to have a high and very high impact (average above 3).

The results of this software program showed that ethnic food, strong marketing and acculturation indices have a direct and significant effect on ethnicity index. Acculturation index also has a direct effect on adaptation index. Finally, the two indices of ethnic food and ethnic marketing indirectly and indices of acculturation and ethnicity and adaptation have a direct and significant relationship with the main research variable, namely foreign tourists. According to the obtained results in today's world, the importance of tourism cannot be ignored. In many cases, the importance of tourism is seen only in generating income and job opportunities; while the importance and greatness of tourism is not limited to economic interests and If planned properly, it can improve indicators of social justice, living standards, public welfare, regional balance and equilibrium.