Factors Affecting Tourism Marketing in Rural Areas (Rural Areas of Qaenat County as a Case Study)

The current article was written with the aim of investigating the influencing factors on rural tourism marketing in the villages of Qaenat county. In terms of purpose, this research is in the group of applied research, in terms of nature and method, in the group of descriptive-analytical research, and in terms of time, it is in the category of single-section research. The method of data collection was done quantitatively using a structured questionnaire, and data analysis was done using structural equation modeling technique and descriptive and inferential statistics. The statistical population of the research includes experts and managers of organization of cultural heritage, tourism and handicrafts, rural tourists of Qaenat county, and rural municipality and members of the islamic councils of the villages. Sampling was done through simple random and snowball method. The sample size has also been considered by considering the tenfold rule and also Cochran equal to 350 people. To ensure the validity of the research questionnaire, content validity and factor loading coefficient, combined reliability and also Cronbach's alpha method were used to check the reliability. The results indicate that the components of people, product, place, promotion, physical evidence, process, and price are of great importance in tourism marketing of rural areas, but nevertheless, the performance of tourism trustees, regarding each of the mentioned components are below average. Therefore, according to the indicators of tourism marketing in rural areas, necessary measures to improve the situation of tourism marketing should be put on the agenda of the trustees.