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The objective of this study is to analyze the experiences in wine tourism according to narratives shared by the visitors themselves. Furthermore, this study aims to examine the levels of intensity associated with these experiences within a wine destination, considering the segmentation of visitors.

This study uses a mixed-methods approach to analyze data, incorporating a deductive process followed by content analysis. Data collection procedures include a bibliographic review and a data survey conducted through netnography research to analyze 954 visitor reviews on TripAdvisor shared by visitors to Vale dos Vinhedos. Also, statistical analysis is performed to assess whether there are any significant variations in attribute citations among different market segmentation profiles.

The study’s discoveries indicate that there are no significant differences in intensity among profile segments for the dimensions of entertainment, aesthetics, educational and interactions, unlike escapism. The findings reveal that attributes such as “winery,” “wine,” “products and services” and “landscape” are essential for all visitors. In addition, the study shows that social interactions in the wine tourism destination are not as significant as previously assumed.

This research study constitutes a methodological advancement in the field of market segmentation using electronic word-of-mouth data. It provides crucial insights into the experiential nuances of the research locus and the varying degrees of these experiences in relation to visitor segmentation. Additionally, the contributions of this study are not only of theoretical importance but also hold practical implications for market segmentation strategies.

The purpose of this paper is two‐fold: first, to identify segments of mall visitors based on the way they perceive mall attributes, their activities and their visiting patterns; second, to examine whether different social groups are characterized by different mall consumption habits. In addition, the Israeli segmentation will be compared with segmentations of mall visitors in other countries, previously described in the literature.Design/methodology/approach – Data were collected through a phone intercept survey of 725 respondents comprising a representative sample of Israeli mall visitors.

In total, three mall visitor segments were found – enthusiasts, recreationals, and utilitarians – validating findings of previous studies conducted in other countries. The three segments differed in perceived mall attributes, mall activities and visiting patterns, and in their consumption behavior (planned versus impulse buying and money spent), as well as in their demographics.

The results suggest activities and visiting patterns as the best foundations for the preparation of plans to attract mall visitors. Enthusiasts are attracted primarily by the mall's entertainment activities; recreationals look for places to hang out with others; and utilitarians prefer a functional retail mix. Retailers should address each segment separately and make separate plans accordingly.

The paper contributes to the consumer behavior literature by validating previous findings of three groups of mall visitors; and to the cross‐cultural literature on mall visitors by shedding light on mall visitors in a multicultural society. In addition, the study offers practical insights for mall managements.

This study examines the effect of festival visitors' emotional solidarity and segmentation on revisiting intentions to Ghana for the Panafest/Emancipation festivals during the COVID-19 pandemic.

The study utilised data from a self-completed survey administered to festival-goers who attended the Panafest and Emancipation festivals in 2019 and 2021. In 2019, 782 questionnaires were sent to participants out of which 446 responded to the questionnaires. However, in 2021, 567 questionnaires were administered to the festival participants out of which 296 responded to the questionnaires. Multiple linear regression was performed using the ordinary least square (OLS) estimation technique.

The study found that emotional solidarity, gender, age, educational background and place of residence are important factors in predicting whether festival visitors will revisit Ghana for the Panafest and Emancipation festivals or not. Emotional solidarity was a positive predictor of revisit intentions, while gender and age also played a role with male and older visitors being more inclined to revisit Ghana for the festivals. The educational background had a positive and significant effect in 2021 but was insignificant in 2019. Place of residence had a significant but negative effect in 2021 due to the emergence of COVID-19.

The study's findings suggest that stakeholders in Ghana's tourism industry, including the Ministry of Tourism, Arts and Culture, Ghana Tourist Authority, hotels and other hospitality services, should consider emotional solidarity and visitor segmentation when developing marketing strategies. Additionally, strategies to address the impact of COVID-19 on revisit intentions and spending should be considered.

This study contributes to the understanding of the factors that influence festival visitors' revisit intentions in Ghana and how the emergence of COVID-19 affects these intentions. The study's focus on emotional solidarity and visitor segmentation provides insights into developing effective marketing strategies in the tourism industry.

This study aims to identify and validate the different clusters of wine festival visitors based on their hedonic motivation. Further, this study also sought how identified clusters were different in terms of perceived value, satisfaction and loyalty to the wine festival.

A survey was conducted during the International Beach Wine Festival held in Karnataka, India, to collect primary data from 400 visitors. Data were subjected to a two-step cluster analysis. Further, cluster segmentation based on visitors’ demographics, perceived value, satisfaction and loyalty was conducted. Decision tree analysis based on recursive partitioning algorithm was used to validate the clusters.

A two-step cluster analysis identified two distinct segments and named those as elite and informal visitors based on hedonic motivation. The cluster scores show that the elite group had the best ratings on social status, socialization and family harmony. On the other hand, the informal group had top scores for wine tasting, enjoyment, change from routine and the festival atmosphere. Decision tree analysis results indicate that social status enjoyment and taste motives differentiate an informal group from the elite group.

This study was conducted in a wine festival held in a single location. To assess the strength of the results, case studies in other regions will be of importance.

This study extended the knowledge of the wine festival by adapting hedonic motivation as a basis for wine festival segmentation. Besides, this study’s empirical findings would greatly benefit wine festival organizers to formulate an appropriate marketing strategy to target each wine festival visitors’ cluster based on the differentiating factors obtained from the decision tree modelling.

Umrah is a religious ritual that takes place inside the Holy Mosque in Makkah. Umrah can be performed any time during the year; however, performing Umrah in the month of Ramadan is much rewarded. Although the kingdom of Saudi Arabia is hosting this event each year, studies that focus on exploring the Holy Mosque visitor segments are scarce. This study aims to explore and describe the marketing segments of Umrah performers relative to their Umrah experience inside the Holy Mosque of Makkah. Most specifically, this study aims to explore segments of Umrah performers based on their perception of servicescape, hedonic and convenience value and the visitors’ outcome behaviors [i.e. intention to revisit and positive word of mouth (PWOM)].

Mixed-method techniques of data collection [i.e. self-administered questionnaires (n = 278) and short discussions (n = 10)] were used.

Cluster analysis is used for data analysis. The findings revealed four clusters of Umrah performers: real, occasional, rational and passionate performers.

This study is a first attempt to target pilgrims based on their experience with the servicescape during the organized religious event; despite its exploratory nature, it reveals interesting insights that will be useful for managers and scholars. Although the study helps to enrich the existing knowledge on visitors’ experience and proposes some implications for practitioners, it does have some limitations. First, convenience sampling was used, and hence the findings cannot be generalized. Second, the limited period of observation did not allow the authors to provide a complete picture of the pilgrims’ behavior; for this reason, the study findings partially describe the phenomenon. Another limitation is related to the difficulty of approaching respondents from Asia or South East Asia although they constitute a significant percentage of the total Umrah performers every year; this is because of the language barrier as data was collected from only English and Arabic speakers. Hence, to overcome these limitations, it is suggested that future studies could be expanded to target Asian respondents and perhaps other nationalities; and could be undertaken in other religious contexts. Moreover, an interesting future study could be carried out to compare the same model during other religious events. Added to that, another growing area of research could be approached by researchers, such as the impact of pilgrims sharing their experiences on influencing E-PWOM.

The findings reveal several implications for policymakers and stakeholders. The segmentation of Umrah performers assists destination managers, policymakers and local firms involved in managing this mass event to identify effective marketing decision-makers, business strategies and policymakers to satisfy the needs of these visitors (Disegna et al., 2011). Particularly, the identification of the key characteristics of these visitors can help destination marketers to develop a marketing mix that suits the needs of each cluster (Smith et al., 2014). Despite that the performers’ main motivation is the religious purpose, marketing strategists can attract the attention of these visitors to visit other religious, cultural and heritage sites in the country.

Encouraging the visit to other tourist spots in Saudi has several impacts on nourishing the economy and the community. Tourism in Saudi could encourage entrepreneurs to start new ventures to satisfy the need of visitors to the country. Small-medium enterprises could benefit from tourism as they could target market niches in which leader companies are not serving. For instance, hand-made souvenirs are one of these industries that could grow to satisfy the need of visitors.

The results contribute to the literature of event segmentation by identifying visitors’ profiles to rarely investigated destinations. The findings reveal several implications for policymakers and stakeholders.

The purpose of this study is to segment the market of first‐time visitors based on the activities travelers engage in while at a destination using demographics, socio‐economic variables, and trip‐related characteristics.

The research analyzes 1,104 exit surveys completed by first‐time visitors to the Canadian province of Prince Edward Island. Clustering analysis identifies three segments that are refined and tested by multivariate and bivariate analyses.

The results indicate that there are three distinct segments of first‐time visitors based on travel activities: culture‐oriented (26 percent of the market), active (37 percent), and casual (37 percent). The key differences among the three segments are demographic, socio‐economic, trip‐related characteristics, and spending patterns. These results confirm the sustainability and profitability of the market segments.

Segmenting markets for products or services, in any industry, is vital to gain a better understanding of the customer, and to better allocate scarce tourism resources to product development, marketing, service, and delivery. Therefore, all tourism industry stakeholders must be aware of the market segments that are currently visiting the destination.

Tourist segments based on activities are not absolutes, but a continuum. The majority of first‐time visitors to a destination engage in a variety of travel activities across the segments, running from more to less involved. Successful tourism destinations are those that meet the various activity needs of their segments in both their marketing and on the ground.

Serralves em Festa! is a festival of contemporary artistic expression held annually in the city of Porto attracting a large number of national and international tourists. As there is no entrance fee, the purpose of this paper is to examine the effect of the perceived value through the attendee’s willingness to pay for the event. The authors also describe the respondents (the “cheap talkers”) who indicated that they are willing to pay for a festival but when compared to other groups their opinion is different.

Considering the socio-economic and demographic characteristics of visitors, their segmentation and satisfaction level, a regression model was created, based on combination of a double hurdle approach with a contingent valuation (CV) analysis.

The results show that gender and age above 53 years old are more likely to decide to pay for the event, while place of residence, satisfaction, repeated visits and intention to revisit influence the amount of the event’s payment. The cheap talkers are the respondents residing in Portugal.

Possible options for the implementation of an entrance fee or a system of donations are discussed taking into consideration the segmentation of demand. The authors concluded that an organized system of donations, combined with institutional sponsors, limited advertising (also with negative impacts on the perceived authenticity) and merchandising related to the event could contribute for an increment of the revenues related to the festival. Other implications related to the cultural and economic impacts on the city are also addressed.

It was combined a double hurdle approach with a CV method based on a segmentation of the public, which influences the propensity to pay for the event. This paper makes a contribution to the literature by seeking to deal with the cheap talk problem in CV methods by observing the comparison of the amount of the event’s payment between groups.

With the growing interest in eudaimonia in the past years and the need to better understand festival visitors' motivation in the context of music festivals, this study aims to propose visitor segmentation based on the values of hedonia, life satisfaction and eudaimonia.

The analysis in this study employs a case research method that follows the abductive paradigm. The authors begin their conceptual foundation with a review of the literature on hedonia, life satisfaction and eudaimonia. The authors then use the preliminary conceptual foundation as the basis of rival analysis through a focus group and interviews with senior executives, government officials, communities and other related stakeholders. The authors also carry out an exploratory factor analysis to determine the building blocks of eudaimonic festival experiences. Last, using cluster analysis, the authors support their conceptual proposition from the initial qualitative inquiries.

From the three studies that the authors performed, their findings suggest that, based on hedonia and eudaimonia, festival attendees can be divided into three distinct segments: (1) pleasure seekers (i.e. visitors who look for personal pleasure, enjoyment and affection), (2) playful learners (i.e. visitors who not only seek pleasure, but also consider the urgency to think about the need to grow as a person) and (3) transcendentalists (i.e. visitors who seek a balance of pleasure, escapism, self-reflection, personal meaning and impact through attending festival activities).

This study argues that the ideas of hedonia and eudaimonia are present in the context of the music festival. Theoretically, this paper suggests that festival-goers can be divided into three clusters based on the values of hedonia and eudaimonia: pleasure seekers, playful learners and transcendentalists. Practically, this study suggests that festival organisers should consider developing music concert events by taking into account the eudaimonic and hedonistic desires, intrinsically possessed by the festival-goers, which is expected to add value to the produced musical event.

This study is the first to present visitor segmentation in a music festival setting based on the values of eudaimonia, life satisfaction and hedonia.

The aim of this study was to investigate the differences in the perception of service quality among various demographic and behavioural visitor segments within the theme park tourism market.

A quantitative survey was conducted using a structured questionnaire which was distributed to 655 theme park visitors. Different groups of visitors were identified through the use of cluster analysis based on the evaluation of both demographic variables and a number of behavioural factors associated with their characteristics in terms of “time and cost” allocations for visits to a theme park.

The findings confirm that differences in demographic characteristics significantly affect perceptions of visitors as demonstrated in the way they are likely to evaluate importance and performance factors in a theme park’s delivery of services. In contrast, behavioural segmentation in terms of time allocation and associated expenditure is unlikely to produce significant differences in the visitors’ perceptions of the level of service provided.

Although there are many studies related to visitors’ perceived service quality, none of them use the same methodology as applied in this study of theme park industry. The research results reveal important implications for the theme park industry because of this new understanding of the segmentation differences for visitor-perceived service quality. By directing attention of management to these differences, improvements in service quality perceptions can more readily be achieved.

This paper seeks to investigate how to use a web analytics tool to conduct deep analysis of users' web behaviors. This study aims to focus on examining whether the types of traffic sources and temporal fluctuation influence the web visitors' performance on the web portal of a K‐12 resource inventory.

One year's data were collected via the Advanced Segmentation function of Google Analytics. To compare visitors' behavior from different types of traffic recourses with the intervention of temporal effect, clickstream data of three visitor segments were collected.

Traffic sources and temporal effect have been found to influence web site visitors' performance interactively. Search engines seemed good at bringing a significantly large amount of traffic to the eThemes site, but most visitors are likely “information encounters”. However, visitors from direct traffic (bookmark/typed URLs) seemed to visit the eThemes site purposefully – stay for a long time on the site and view more web pages. Additionally, loyal users of the site seemed to employ the eThemes site as an everyday life information source.

This study introduces a strategic approach to study and analyzes web site visitors' behavior longitudinally. The findings of this study contribute to loyal user behavior identification. Empirical evidence has been found to support the correlational relationship between traffic sources, the temporal factor, and Key Performance Identifiers of a site.