Event Audiences and Expectations

Practitioner Sensemaking of Event Marketing Managerial Practice: a Socio-Phenomenological and Hermeneutic Study

“…She says it is very difficult to demarcate 'audience' and 'participation' because who is the actual audience? In managing and marketing events it is important to clearly define all parts of the audience so as to meet their needs and expectations (Mackellar, 2013). Andy, in his last extract, confirmed this through story development and storytelling by crafting and creating an immersive event and story that people want to participate in and share with others.…”

“…The biggest contribution to this topic is by Masterman and E. Wood (2006) in their book Innovative Marketing Communications -strategies for the events industry, which explicates the definition, development, stages and importance and use of relationship marketing in events, [37] supported with theory and a variety of applied case studies. Another welcome addition to the existing literature is Event Audiences and Expectations by Jo Mackellar (2013). This title specifically focuses on developing event and festival audiences and has a useful chapter relating to marketing of events.…”

“…De Pelsmacker, Geuens andVan den Bergh (2007, 2011), meanwhile, suggest that although other parts of the marketing mix lay the foundation, it is marketing communications, which ultimately determine how successful an event is. Mackellar (2013) indicated recent studies suggest successful events require social network strategies that engage in new technologies popular with audiences segments and relationship strategies to develop 'word-of-mouth' advertising. Allen et al (2008) remarked positively about utilising integrated marketing communications (IMC).…”

“…The network concept is used in studies of relationships between individuals, rather than organisations. The network approach is particularly useful where there are many organisations involved in the development of an event (Mackellar, 2013) One way of understanding the complexity of the event organisation is to see it as a project network. A project network is a web of relationships in which no single actor can act as a legitimate authority for the network as a whole.…”

“…The second proposition mentioned by (Woodside et al, 2008) suggests a substantial amount of information stored in and retrieved from memory is episodic -stories that include inciting incidents, experiences, outcomes/evaluations, and summaries and nuances of person-toperson and person-and-brand relationships within specific contexts (Esch, Langner, Schmitt, & Geus, 2006;Fournier, 1998;Smit, Bronner, & Tolboom, 2007). Events and festivals offer audiences a multitude of experiences, all within the same environment (Berridge, 2007;Crowther, 2010a;Mackellar, 2013;. Crowther (2010) developed the concept of 'the marketing space' illustrated as 'an experience journey' unique to events and festivals in which he suggests organisations utilise this type of platform to engage audiences in a specific event or festival space, which includes three experiential stages: the anticipation stage (pre-event); the experience itself (during the event); and reflection stage (post-event).…”