The experience economy approach to festival marketing: vivid memory and attendee loyalty

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.