Designing Festival Experiences to Influence Visitor Perceptions: The Case of a Wine and Food Festival

Abstract

An activity that has been found to enhance wine tourism opportunities is wine and food festivals.This article examines how, through the manipulation of such festival attributes, festival managers can foster positive consumer perceptions of products central to the festival. The article first describes the attributes that define a festival and then, using the Moonlight Wine Tour festival as a case for study, explores how much of an influence certain festival attributes have on shaping visitors’ perceptions of the wine on show. An ANOVA determines that five festival attributes are effective predictors of creating positive changes in people’s perceptions, while one attribute has a negative effect. A binomial generalized linear model is then created for use in managerial situations by specifying which combined set of attributes are the most significant in creating positive and negative changes in consumer perceptions.

Consumer behaviour in tourism: Concepts, influences and opportunities

“…Stimuli affect the senses, whether auditory, visual, tactile, olfactory and/or taste, and individuals selectively organise perceptions into meaningful relationships, with interpretation influenced by social and personal factors (Moutinho, 1993, p. 11). As theory on perception is drawn into CB from cognitive psychology, research on consumer perceptions tends to analyse cognitive elements in the perceptual process (Axelsen & Swan, 2010), often at the expense of affective elements (Pike & Ryan, 2004), without due recognition that cognitive and affective dimensions interplay (Hansen, 2005).…”

“…Recent novel applications concentrate on tourists' perceptions of medical tourism across differing national cultures (Yu & Ko, 2012), the impacts of wind turbines in recreational landscapes (Frantal & Kunc, 2011), and how wine and food festival managers can manipulate event attributes to shape positive consumer perceptions (Axelsen & Swan, 2010). These works, amongst others, signal that the vitality of perceptions research in tourism is likely to continue as researchers track consumer perceptions of changing social, political, environmental, technological and service-related issues.…”

The effect of tourists’ perceptions of a tourism product on memorable travel experience: Implications for destination branding

“…Understanding tourists' perceptions (TPs) provides a tool for tourism destinations to develop ways to nurture, develop and present their core tourism products and services (Engl, 2011, Herstein, Jaffe, & Berger, 2014. For destinations to be competitive, they must offer the tourism product or service that matches the characteristics of their target markets (Bonn, Axelsen and Swan (2010) argue that understanding perceptions of tourists enables the establishment, reinforcement, or even changing destination images.…”

Visitors' Motivation for Attending Traditional Cultural Events as the Basis for Market Segmentation: Evidence from Slovakia

“…Thematic festivals provide cost-effective platforms for promotion of start-up businesses and help raising awareness of new products and preferences for locally produced goods. Festivals generate opportunities for additional and part-time employment and as such are particularly welcomed in economically less developed communities (Axelsen and Swan, 2010). In addition to generating tax revenue to local communities, which can be further invested in a number of civic projects, festivals also leave a city with tangible benefits in terms of infrastructure improvements such as new facilities and venues (Yolal et al, 2009).…”