Experience Based Segmentation of Festival Participants

Abstract

Festivals have become popular due to their social, economic and cultural benefits for both the visitors and the local residents. As the increasing number and diversity of festivals create a competitive environment, market segmentation based on consumer-oriented marketing strategies is advantageous for festival organizers. From this point of view, this study aimed to offer a segmentation analysis of festival participants on their festival experiences within the confines of experience economy. For the purpose of the paper, a field study was carried out in the case of the Kuzeyfest Rock Music Festival in Sinop, Turkey. Descriptive analysis, factor analysis, cluster analysis, chi-square and t-test analysis were applied to the data collected by the survey technique. Findings revealed that participants could be segmented into two groups as “active experiencers” and “passive experiencers” on the basis of their experiences and sociodemographic characteristics. Findings also showed that passive experiencers were young, single and students, and mostly entertained themselves while passive experiencers were employed, highly educated and middle aged and mostly experience education and escape.