Drivers of Electronic Marketing in rural areas (case study: Khoshab County)

Villages, as the main pillars of production, have great potential in using e-commerce services. Considering the position of information and communication technology (ICT) in the global arena and the existence of many problems in rural areas, including the supply of manufactured products, the electronic marketing solution is one of the development approaches in this field. In this research, the effective drivers of electronic marketing in the rural areas of Khoshab County have been identified. This research is a applied, descriptive-analytical and has a mixed method. After reviewing the literature and the background of the research in the sources, the necessary data were collected using the Delphi method in three stages, and the structural analysis method was used for its analysis. The participants were 26 marketing and rural development experts. 18 primary variables were identified in effective economic, social-cultural, infrastructural-environmental and political-institutional dimensions. The primary variables were defined in the framework of the cross-effect matrix in Mic Mac software. The state of the dispersion plate of the variables indicates the instability of the electronic marketing system in the range where most of the variables are scattered around the diagonal axis of the plate; Accordingly, five categories of variables were identified. According to the high score of direct and indirect influence, 11 main factors were identified as the key drivers of e-marketing in the region. Among theme, the government's efforts to provide non-discriminatory access to information technology and electronic marketing in the first place, the approval of necessary laws and the establishment of legal infrastructure, the quality and ease of access to supporting institutions, the competitiveness of the agricultural market and the increase in the share of electronic transactions, increase Trust in this type of marketing, the security of the electronic marketing network, etc. are in the next degrees of importance, respectively.