The Study of Foreign Tourists' Views about Iranian Handicrafts' Packaging Qualities (Case Study: Isfahan Handicrafts)

Handicraft selling is an inseparable part of the tourism industry and is considered an invisible part of exports, showing the tangible cultural features of the country to tourists. The packaging, as the outermost layer of handicraft, is a crucial factor of the product's quality. The packaging should have cultural aspects, be relevant to its content and also have a high quality. Since the packaging is a tool used to introduce the products in a correct manner, and also plays to stimulate the consumers, it is an important factor in the economic growth of tourism. As a result, the packaging should have appropriate information and visual quality in order to encourage the consumer to buy it. In this research, different parts of visual qualities and informative aspects of handicrafts industry packaging has been investigated.  The aim of this work is to determine the most important features of the packaging for tourists in Isfahan.  Also, we are after determining weaknesses and strengths of packaging design. The questionnaire method is used for this and they are handed out to tourists to used to obtain information. Statistical analysis is carried out by (SPSS) and (SmartPLS) software. The results show tourists only considered the color and size of packaging as having average acceptability. Other visual aspects such as innovation, shape, design and all informative features did not satisfy their expectations. The results demonstrates the relative priority of the visual aspects to informative features. The other important parameters in order are are graphic design, packaging type, size, color, innovation and shape. Furthermore, using international language, the font size and type, and providing appropriate information based on the type of the product are the other expectations.