Development of a guideline for OTOP Nawatwithi tourism community enterprises in Udon Thani, Thailand

Abstract

This research aims to develop a guideline for tourism community enterprises under the OTOP Nawatwithi Project, with the focus on the quality of life of people in Udon Thani, Thailand. The study explores the factors influencing the development of the community enterprises, which include community participation, production and operation, good management, and integrated marketing. 360 samples were selected for responding to a questionnaire survey. Structural equation modeling (SEM) was employed to quantitatively analyze the complex relationships between the causal factors found in the hypotheses, the foundation of the survey questions. In terms of the qualitative research, there were in-depth interviews as well as focus group discussions with experts in the field of community enterprise development. The research results revealed that the examined factors influenced the development of the OTOP tourism community enterprises in Udon Thani at a high level. Integrated marketing was the factor with the highest mean. The correlations between the explored variables were positive by which the magnitude of the correlation coefficients was between 0.092 and 0.613. The pair with the highest correlation was “quality of goods and services” and “number of tourists” (r = 0.613), while the pair with the lowest correlation was “problem analysis” and “quality of life” (r = 0.092). According to the developed guideline, community enterprises should adopt good management and expand the networks of teams in order to create high-quality products and services. Community members should participate in the development process, and integrated marketing should be applied for expanding target groups.