Digital Cultural Heritage Marketing: Innovative and Inclusive Marketing of Moroccan Cultural Heritage in the Digital Age - A Case Study of Fès

Résumé

Start with a plain question and it soon turns awkward. What does digital heritage marketing actually accomplish in Fès, the Moroccan medina placed on the UNESCO World Heritage list in 1981, and does its twin promise of innovation and inclusion survive contact with real data? Two hundred and fifty respondents answered a structured questionnaire. One block of items rated technological innovation, running from virtual tours through augmented and virtual reality to interactive platforms. A second asked about inclusive design, probing language provision, cultural sensitivity, and whether accessibility features existed at all. A third recorded what such features are meant to produce, that is, the intention to visit, the satisfaction that follows a visit, and the readiness to recommend the city to someone else. Then the reliability check refused to cooperate. Cronbach's alpha came back at −0.413 for Digital Innovation, 0.002 for Inclusivity, and 0.095 for Engagement. Every one of those sits far below the conventional floor of 0.70, and the first cannot be defended at all. A scale that fails internal consistency this badly cannot be summed into anything meaningful, so every result downstream is read as exploratory rather than confirmatory. The correlations say the same thing in a different key. Most of the expected links are faint, a few run backwards, and almost none clear significance. Perceptions stay warm on their own terms, innovation averaging 3.82 (SD = 0.81) while the inclusivity items land between 3.30 and 3.87, yet that warmth never becomes behavior. What the paper offers is a diagnosis. It shows exactly where the measurement breaks, it explains why models such as TAM, UTAUT, and the stimulus-organism-response framework cannot be tested on instruments nobody validated, and it sketches a few cautious directions that people working in Fès could examine properly once better tools exist.