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The COVID-19 pandemic has prompted the fast growth of online music festivals. This paper explores how festivalgoers' experience affects their satisfaction and drives their loyalty to re-attend online music festivals in China.

Based on an understanding of the music festival experience and the characteristics of live-streamed performances, this paper investigates five factors that affect festivalgoers' satisfaction and loyalty, namely the music experience, ambience experience, separation experience, social experience and novelty experience. The relationships between festivalgoers' experience, satisfaction and loyalty are also explored using structural equation modelling techniques.

The empirical results suggest that four of the above-mentioned five factors of the online music festival experience directly affect festivalgoers' satisfaction and loyalty. The online mode is a rapid adaptation of and preferred alternative to offline music festivals, whilst the creation of the experience, along with satisfaction with and loyalty to the online music festival, are determined by different factors compared to offline modes. Overall festival satisfaction positively enhances the relationship between festivalgoers' experience and loyalty to online music festivals.

This study offers a range of practical and managerial implications for organisers of online music festival, similar activities such as live-streaming concerts and stage performances and hybrid events.

This study explores a phenomenon that has evolved quickly since COVID-19 and will, potentially, have an ongoing and enduring impact on the music festival sector. It differentiates the understanding of festivalgoers' experience in online and offline modes, which is a new addition to the literature. It also enriches the theoretical understanding of the experience of, satisfaction with and loyalty to online music festivals.

This chapter addresses the concept of loyalty from a consumer culture theory perspective.

We investigated loyalty in the context of annual (French) music festivals and their ritualized meanings for consumers with a multi-method approach, both qualitative and quantitative methods.

From our study loyalty appears as: (a) social rather than individual; (b) outcome of a social evaluation of emotional experiences rather than individual satisfaction; (c) temporally and (d) spatially structured and structuring. This stands in contrast to dominant conceptualizations of loyalty that emphasize individual’s satisfaction as antecedent of loyalty.

Our findings take off from Fournier and Yao’s (1997) and Fournier’s (1998) suggestions that loyalty can be reconceptualized as relationships. However, we argue that these relationships are as much a matter of social relations between people than between people and brands (or brands as anthropomorphized by brand communities) that are performed ritually and repetitively. This research highlights the necessity to reconsider both the definition of loyalty and organizations’ main loyalty strategies, which are individual-centric and do not consider the social and cultural environment of consumers.

The objective of this study was to examine the relationships among festival personality, satisfaction and loyalty. Also, the study further analyzed the moderation effect of involvement on the relationships between festival personality, satisfaction and loyalty.

The authors adopt a two-stage mixed-method approach. Through a list of brand personality traits from previous research and in-depth interviews with participants of a film festival, festival personality constructs were identified: exceptional, competent, reliable and cozy. The authors then analyzed an integrative model of festival personality, satisfaction, involvement and loyalty from the qualitative findings. A survey with a convenience sample of 279 film festival participants was conducted.

The findings suggest that festival personality influence satisfaction and loyalty. Furthermore, this study confirms the significant impact of involvement on the relationships between festival personality, satisfaction and loyalty.

This study enables authors to understand the festival personality from the perspective of the visitors and expands the theoretical understanding of how the personality of the festival affects the visitors. The findings of this study suggest that the festival personality can be predictors and determinants of participants' satisfaction and loyalty. Also, this is one of the first attempts to identify the effects of involvement on festival personality and its outcomes. Current research findings demonstrated involvement as a moderator variable in the relationships between festival personality and festival satisfaction and loyalty.

This paper aims to empirically examine how five different brand equity dimensions of a festival brand (i.e. awareness, image, quality, value and loyalty) are inter-related. Specifically, this study aims to examine the impact of brand awareness on perceived brand image, perceived brand quality and perceived value; the impact of perceived brand image on perceived brand quality and brand loyalty; and the impact of perceived brand quality on perceived value and brand loyalty.

The conceptual model was tested with an onsite sample of a public festival referred to as the VEISHEA (Veterinary Medicine, Engineering, Industrial Science, Home Economics and Agriculture) festival, which is located in a Midwestern college-town. Confirmatory factor analysis and structural equation modeling were used to reach the goals of the study.

The findings revealed that improving attendees’ awareness is a keystone in promoting brand quality perceptions, increasing perceived value and creating favorable brand image. Perceptions of quality on brand loyalty were stronger than any other effect, pointing out the need for superior quality. These findings confirmed that a public festival which does not require visitor admission fees can increase visitors by utilizing branding strategies, as has been done with other types of festivals.

This research was conducted at a public festival. Further study should be conducted at other festivals/events. Analysis of antecedents such as advertising and promotions in the brand equity creation process will provide further important information.

This study provides guidance for practitioners to manage festival brands properly and develop strategies (e.g. communications and promotions) which reinforce the intangible asset of brand equity.

This is the first study that applies the brand equity concept to the setting of public festivals. This application to a new context contributes to the body of knowledge of brand equity theory.

The purpose of this paper is to propose the mechanism of festival attachment and examine how it serves as a significant predictor of place attachment and place loyalty.

Through on-site survey with convenience sampling, 465 visitors were surveyed at the Pingxi Sky Lantern Festival, which is one of the most famous Taiwanese festivals. Structural equation modeling is used to examine the proposed research model.

Empirical results of this study reveal that “hedonism” is the most important antecedent for improving festival attachment, followed by novelty seeking, attractions and cultural exploration. Festival attachment exerts positive effects on place attachment, which then increases place loyalty. Moreover, place attachment partially mediates the relationship between festival attachment and place loyalty.

By hosting festivals, festival managers can induce festival attachment in visitors and then transfer the attachment with festivals into the host place. The findings of this study demonstrate the major role of festivals in promoting local tourism.

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.

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.

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.

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.

The study is a pioneer in the evaluation of vividity of memory to the festival context.

The impact of event quality on expenditure and visitors’ loyalty has been an issue seldom analyzed by festival literature. These same incidental relations were not assessed from a temporary perspective in the case of recurrent cultural events. This paper aims to explore these causal relationships and to report on the moderation effect of the temporary inquiry on the editions of the festival.

Nine hypotheses were examined through squares SEM techniques, and the model validation was carried out by assessing the measurement and structural model. In addition, a multi-group analysis was performed to test the temporary moderation effect. Finally, a survey was applied during three successive editions (2013 = 164 cases, 2014 = 154 cases, 2015 = 128 cases).

The local and ephemeral nature of the festival favors immediate consumption, and the budget share increase among categories passes through diversification to stimulate purchases. In this particular context, the moderation induced by the sequence of editions had a conclusive impact on the analyzed relationships, generating the need to focus on the temporary variability to understand and operate the recurrent events.

The strengthening of the festival went through a stage where it opened to other segments of visitors despite the dominant opinion to preserve the local character of the event. In addition, this study clarifies that a retrospective analysis of previous editions, when compared to the stationarity perspective of the festival, allows a better understanding of the required upgrading to preserve visitor loyalty.

El impacto de la calidad del evento en el gasto y la lealtad de los visitantes ha sido un tema pocas veces analizado por la literatura de los festivales. Estas mismas relaciones incidentales no fueron valoradas desde una perspectiva temporal en el caso de eventos culturales recurrentes. El artículo explora estas relaciones causales e informa sobre el efecto moderador de la investigación longitudinal de las ediciones del festival.

Se examinaron nueve hipótesis a través de técnicas de cuadrados MES, y la validación se llevó a cabo mediante la evaluación del modelo estructural y de medición. Además, se realizó un análisis multigrupo para probar el efecto de moderación longitudinal. Los datos analizados provienen de encuestas aplicadas durante tres ediciones sucesivas (2013 = 164 casos, 2014 = 154 casos, 2015 = 128 casos).

El carácter local y efímero del evento favorece el consumo inmediato, y el aumento de la participación en el gasto entre categorías pasa por la diversificación que permite estimular la compra. En este contexto particular, la moderación inducida por la secuencia de ediciones incidió contundentemente en las relaciones analizadas, generando la necesidad de prestar atención a los cambios temporales para comprender y operar los eventos recurrentes.

El fortalecimiento del festival pasó por una etapa donde se abrió a otros segmentos de visitantes a pesar de la opinión dominante de preservar el carácter local del evento. Además, este estudio aclara que un análisis retrospectivo de ediciones anteriores, en comparación con la perspectiva de la estacionariedad del evento, permite gestionar la actualización necesaria que permite preservar la lealtad del visitante.

The primary purpose of this research is to segment food festivalgoers based upon their experiential value. Once those segments are found, it aims to examine whether the segments differ with regard to their perceived level of satisfaction, delight and loyalty.

A self-administered questionnaire was designed to assess the on-site festival experiential value, satisfaction, delight and loyalty of local and overseas visitors at the Macau International food festival. Data were analyzed by using the factor and cluster approach. To profile segments, a series of chi-square tests, ANOVAs and multivariate analysis of variance were performed.

This study uncovered three underlying dimensions of experiential value and classified four segments based on their experiential value among the food festivalgoers, which provides insightful implications for festival organizers and marketers. The segments differed in age, education level and place of residence. Furthermore, the multi-experiential value group was the most important segment, showing the highest festival satisfaction, delight and loyalty.

Experiential value reflects a core value of festival attendees, where the experience is a determining factor in the creation of a successful festival and desirable outcomes. Limited studies, however, have been conducted to segment food festival markets according to their festival experience. This study identified experiential value, applying it as a segmentation criterion within a food festival setting.

The purpose of this paper is to fill the gap in the literature by focusing on the profile and loyalty of visitors to a literary arts festival in South Africa. In addition, this research advocates that festivals can influence visitors’ supplementary behavioural intentions and actions beyond loyalty in the form of literary arts appreciation, purchases and tourism.

A visitor survey was conducted at one of the oldest literary arts festivals in the country where a total of 391 completed self-administered questionnaires were obtained. The statistical analyses comprised three factor analyses (motives to attend the festival, satisfaction with the festival offering elements and behavioural intentions) as well as structural equation modelling, to establish the relationship between the motives, evaluation of the “festivalscapes”, behavioural intentions and loyalty.

The findings confirmed that literary arts festival loyalty is the principle behavioural intention that will occur after attending a literary arts festival. However, the results demonstrated that literary arts festivals also have the potential to increase and stimulate supplementary behavioural intentions in the form of greater awareness of the arts, increased purchasing behaviour of literary works, increased travel to support the literary arts and greater personal involvement.

Festivals, irrespective of the art form that they showcase, therefore, play a significant role in encouraging and increasing purchasing behaviour, which is vital to the viability and continuation of the arts industry.

This is one of the first studies to research the literary arts festival market in South Africa, thereby making a distinct contribution by expanding the literature on the needs of this neglected market and the aspects that influence loyalty to these types of festivals.

The purpose of this study was first to examine how goal-oriented attendees and experiential-oriented attendees were related with their overall satisfaction and loyalty of the destination with respect to international food and wine festival. It also investigated how these relations are mediated by different dimension of experiential consumption values such as consumer return on investment (CROI, active value), escapism (active value) and service excellence (reactive value) and aesthetics (reactive value).

Self-administered questionnaires were distributed to and collected from attendees at the 2011 Food Network South Beach Wine and Food Festival in Miami, Florida. A total of 450 subjects were collected from attendees indicating a response rate of about 88 per cent. Total 13 hypotheses were tested using structural equation model (SEM) with AMOS, and the results were interpreted adapting Mathwick’s (2001) typology of experiential value.

The findings indicate that goal-oriented attendees had stronger relationship with reactive experiential values such as service excellence and aesthetics than active values, whereas experiential-oriented attendees had more significant relations with active experiential values such as CROI and escapism than reactive values. In addition, CROI, escapism and service excellence were found to have a positive influence on the overall satisfaction with the festival; in turn, the attendees’ satisfaction had a positive effect on their intention to revisit the destination. Further, the results demonstrated that all experiential values, including CROI and escapism (active values), and service excellence and aesthetics (reactive values), played a mediating role between goal-oriented/experientially oriented attendee and satisfaction with the festival.

The festival organizers and managers should understand what drives the attendees’ participation in the festival. Implementing experiential marketing through various dimensions of experiential value can attract more potential attendees, provide unique experiences and create favorable perception toward the destination.

The research is original in terms of conceptualizing and empirically testing the relation between experiential consumption values and behavior loyalty within the special events and festivals with a specific focus on international food and wine festival. A finding of particular importance here is verifying the unique characteristics of goal-/experiential-oriented attendees in festival settings and determining the linkages between these different attendees and active/reactive experiential values, not to mention the relation with the overall satisfaction and loyalty to the festival destination.