The experience economy approach to festival marketing: vivid memory and attendee loyalty
Abstract
Purpose
A desirable experiential environment is an essential source of competitive advantage in the festival industry. Understanding festival attendees' experience is imperative for festival organizers because attendees' experience is a predictor of their future behavior. With the experience economy concept of Pine and Gilmore (1998), the study identified four underlying dimensions of festival attendees' experience (education, entertainment, esthetics, and escapism) and examined the impacts of these experience dimensions on festival attendees' vividity of memory and loyalty.
Design/methodology/approach
Data were collected from online surveys completed by 338 attendees of VEISHEA festival. This study employed confirmatory factor analysis, regression analysis, and structural equation modeling to achieve its goals.
Findings
Experience has a positive effect on vivid memory, which consequently influences loyalty. Each dimension of experience economy significantly influences vividity of memory. However loyalty is affected only by the entertainment and esthetics dimensions.
Practical implications
Festival marketers are advised to design activities that provide memorable experiential products and services for attendees based on the four dimensions of the experience economy.
Originality/value
The study is a pioneer in the evaluation of vividity of memory to the festival context.
Keywords
Acknowledgements
Received 25 June 2012 Revised 29 October 2012 Accepted 18 December 2012
Citation
Manthiou, A., (Ally) Lee, S., (Rebecca) Tang, L. and Chiang, L. (2014), "The experience economy approach to festival marketing: vivid memory and attendee loyalty", Journal of Services Marketing, Vol. 28 No. 1, pp. 22-35. https://doi.org/10.1108/JSM-06-2012-0105
Publisher
:Emerald Group Publishing Limited
Copyright © 2014, Emerald Group Publishing Limited