Segmenting and profiling attendees of a film festival

Abstract

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to analyse film festival spectators on the basis of their motives for attending as well as other variables linked to cultural consumption, the evaluation of the event and certain sociodemographic characteristics of attendees. Design/methodology/approach – Survey data were collected at the Valdivia International Film Festival, the case study. In order to achieve the goals of the paper, a variety of statistical methods and techniques were used. First, principal component factorial analysis was applied to identify the underlying motivational dimensions. Second, the authors adopted cluster analysis based on the dimensions pinpointed in the factorial analysis in order to segment festival attendees. Finally, analysis of variance and χ2 analysis were applied to establish each group's profile. Findings – The empirical research reveals three motivation factors (discovery, entertainment and cinema) and three discrete groups of spectators, labelled as socially indifferent, film lovers and enthusiasts). They present different profiles from a consumption viewpoint. Research limitations/implications – The results provide useful insights into cultural policy and management of this kind of events, and even for those in charge of tourism policies in the city and the region. Originality/value – The paper aims to contribute to the literature addressing festival motivation for the specific case of a film festival, a field for which there are almost no studies into motivation, in a given geographical area South America which is active in creating festivals.

Expanding the Domain of Festival Research: A Review and Research Agenda

“…However, the majority have investigated festivals within national contexts (notable exceptions include: Andersson and Getz 2009;Carlsen and Andersson 2011), particularly within North America, Europe (primarily the UK, Norway and Sweden) and Australia. Notwithstanding, some studies have examined festivals in Asia (Chang 2006;Dewar et al 2001), especially South Korea (Jeong and Santos 2004;Shin 2004), Central and South America (Báez and Devesa 2014;Nurse 2004) and Africa (Kruger and Saayman 2013;Van Zyl and Botha 2004). Further research in a broader range of regions could greatly enhance understanding of differences between festivals.…”

“…Uysal et al . () undertook one of the first studies into the dimensions of motivation, which led to numerous subsequent investigations of underlying motivations for festival attendance (Báez and Devesa ; Kim et al . ).…”

“…A comparatively small number of studies have examined the motivations of different groups of attendees, exploring the relationship between motivations, related activities and levels of participant satisfaction (Formica and Uysal 1998;Lee et al 2004). Uysal et al (1993) undertook one of the first studies into the dimensions of motivation, which led to numerous subsequent investigations of underlying motivations for festival attendance (Báez and Devesa 2014;Kim et al 2006). Interestingly, socialization was found to be a dominant pull factor, rather than simply an experiential by-product of festival attendance (Chang 2006;Formica and Uysal 1998;Thompson and Schofield 2009).…”

Food Markets: A Motivation-Based Segmentation of Tourists

“…A significant number of studies focus on festival attendees' motivation, level of satisfaction and intention to return [15,[18][19][20][21][22][23][24][25][26]. In general, findings from the literature indicate that dimensions of motivation are similar across all festivals; however, the specific components and factors may vary depending on the festivals, events and market [26].…”

“…The analysis of how the socio-demographic variables influence the motivations for attending a tourist destination, festival, etc. is very common in scientific literature [18,20,[33][34][35] and in the field of food tourism, where there are studies without significant differences in the segmentation based on visitors' motivations [10,21]. Others, meanwhile, have discovered an association between the cluster and specific socio-demographic variables [30,31,36].…”