Gap Analysis Between Expectations and Current Status of Handicrafts Production and Sales with Cultural Heritage Tourism Approach the Case Study A Amol County

The boom in manufacturing and sales of handicrafts depends on the provision of requirements that are directly linked to the development of cultural heritage tourism. Aside from the special status of handicrafts in the region's unique cultural industries, this industry plays a vital role in promoting local businesses and employment in the tourism industry. Today, many countries are looking for specialty and high-quality packaging to sell handicrafts, in addition to marketing their products that lead to successful tourist satisfaction. Therefore, it can be demonstrated that it can take a major step in the cultural heritage tourism development by examining the current supply and demand of handicrafts in a region and the expected conditions of tourists to buy handicrafts. The purpose of the present study is to analyze the gap between the current and desirable status of manufacturing and sales of handicrafts with the heritage tourism approach in Amol county. Current research is descriptive-analytic and is based on documentary and field studies. Field studies of the research consist of designing and distributing questionnaires in Amol County. These questionnaires were filled up by 390 tourists that visited from Amol handicrafts. SPSS software was used to process the data, and based on the nature of the data and research objective, paired T-tests and Wilcoxon tests were used to analyze the data. Significance level and averages calculated in all cases showed a meaningful gap between expectations and the current status of Amol county’s handicrafts market. Likewise, the most meaningful gap from tourists’ perspective exists in the cultural effectiveness within variables such as attractiveness, authenticity, identity, quality, creativity, artistic style, and antiquity. Other results of the research show a gap between internal variables components such as supply quality, way of presentation, and degree of cultural effectiveness, transportation competence and royalty extent in handicrafts sales markets of Amol County