| Rural tourism is a very important activity for the development of villages, which causes economic growth, diversity of activities, job creation and increase of income for rural residents. Among the factors that cause the development of rural tourism is the optimal use of marketing techniques, especially electronic marketing. The purpose of this research is to investigate the role of electronic marketing in the development of rural tourism in the villages around Rasht metropolis. This research is practical in terms of purpose and mixed (qualitative and quantitative) in terms of nature and method. The statistical population of the qualitative part is the actors in the field of electronic marketing, 36 of whom were selected by snowball sampling. The statistical population is quantitatively all the tourists who have visited the study area. Due to the large and uncertain number of exact statistics of tourists and according to the condition of sufficient sample size for factor analysis, 200 people were selected by judgmental (targeted) sampling method. The basis of choosing these tourists was their familiarity and use of electronic marketing. The tool for collecting data in the qualitative part of the interview, in the quantitative part, is a researcher-made questionnaire derived from the indicators of the qualitative stage.In order to analyze the data in the qualitative part, the open coding method was used, which led to the identification of 40 items, and in the quantitative part, exploratory and confirmatory factor analysis was used with the help of SPSS and LISREL softwar. Based on the findings of the research, seven factors were extracted using the factor analysis method, which are effective in the development of tourism in the villages around the metropolis of Rasht. These factors, in order of importance, include price, planning and management, advertising, people, product, evidence and physical facilities and location. |
