MARKETING AND MARKET POSITIONING IN THE ARTS FESTIVAL CONTEXT

Get Complete Project Material File(s) Now! »

CHAPTER 3 MARKETING AND MARKET POSITIONING IN THE ARTS FESTIVAL CONTEXT

INTRODUCTION

Festivals and events in South Africa currently face increasing competition in the market place with a choice of more than four festivals per month or one per week on the annual events calendar. Each tourism product (arts festival or event) also has to be marketed effectively against increasing competition for the customer’s leisure time and money. It is a moot point whether all these festivals (more than 85 reported in South Africa) would survive in the long term.
A festival or event will not succeed unless it can meet the motivations, expectations and needs of the participants (which will often be the local community) and the visitors (Shone & Perry, 2004:144; Hall, 1992:137). Marketing is the golden thread that helps make an arts festival successful or an event possible (Hall, 1992:137). Those festivals that determine customer requirements and that deliver the greatest value to their customers (referred to as customer satisfaction) will be successful (Lamb, Hair, McDaniel, Boshoff & Terblanche, 2004:5). Satisfying old and creating new customers (customer satisfaction) is a basic tenet of marketing and it is becoming more important than ever before in the South African festival and event scenario.
Unfortunately, many festivals and events, especially the medium to smaller ones, are probably conducted without the benefit of a marketing plan or positioning strategy and such arts festivals will not survive in the long term (Hall, 1992:137). The arts festivals and events that succeed in attracting audiences are those with proper marketing and positioning strategies (Van der Wagen, 2001:53).
Successful arts festivals can best define and satisfy festival attendees’ requirements in the context of the ever-changing market environment.
The festival’s success depends largely on marketing and the right marketing mix, then communicating it and ultimately positioning and branding the arts festival strategically in the market.
The purpose of this chapter is to give an overview of the area of tourism marketing and market positioning in an arts festival context in South Africa. Following on Section 3.2, the definitions of marketing and event marketing are briefly discussed. The eight elements involved in the marketing mix for events are discussed in Section 3.3. Market segmentation (Section 3.4) focuses on grouping together customers who have similar requirements and buying characteristics, and introduces the festival and event customer at the core of the market.
By addressing the benefits or attributes that customers seek (push and pull attributes), a target group can be selected. Such a target group is central to market positioning (Mullins et al., 2005:17). The marketing programme should aim at positioning the festival product or service directly to the targeted customers in the market. As market positioning is central to marketing, Section 3.5 defines market positioning in a marketing and tourism context as well as in a festival context, discusses positioning models and the steps to be followed in the positioning process, which is explained in Section 3.6. Branding is briefly discussed in Section 3.7 and concluded in Section 3.8.
The aim of this chapter is to introduce the body of knowledge on positioning in marketing and tourism, discuss various positioning models, use them and build on them in Chapters 4 and 5 by doing original research and integrating the literature on positioning, as discussed in this chapter, with the previous secondary research and the new empirical results appearing in Chapters 4 and 5. On this basis, the development of a new model for positioning arts festivals is discussed in Chapter 6.

DEFINING MARKETING

The definitions of marketing demonstrate the different approaches that academics, researchers or applied business purposes have taken to marketing philosophy (Dibb, Simkin, Pride & Ferrell, 2001:5).
Marketing means far more than the popular view of only selling and advertising and other sales promotions (such as coupons or complimentary tickets) or the traditional “four Ps” of product, place, price and promotion (Perreault & McCarthy, 2002:4). These implications are spelled out in the definitions below, as well as in the general discussion. The principal definitions of marketing are introduced consecutively.
Kotler (2000:8), the American marketing academic, defines marketing as follows:

• “A social and managerial process by which individuals and groups obtain what they need and want through creating, offering and freely exchanging products and services of value with others.”

Perreault and McCarthy (2002:8) define marketing from both a micro and macro perspective:

• “Micro marketing is the performance of activities that seek to accomplish an organization’s objectives by anticipating customer or client needs and directing a flow of need-satisfying goods and services from producer to customer or client.”
• “Macro marketing is a social process that directs an economy’s flow of goods and services from producers to consumers in a way that effectively matches supply and demand and accomplishes the objectives of society.”

In other words, micro marketing looks at the needs of the potential customers of individual organisations/festivals whereas macro marketing emphasis the whole marketing system from production, from the planning of the festival to the execution and evaluation thereof. It should be noted that as a result of the broad scope of marketing and the overall relevance in all disciplines (corporate, academical, tourism etc.) the application of marketing in this thesis will not distinguish between the concepts of a festival, organisation or company individually but rather interchangeably. However, for the purpose of this study a festival is an organisation and in the case of direct quotation it is referred to as a company.
Other academics suggest that the marketing concept can only work if it is embedded in the whole culture of the organisation/festival. The United States management consultant Drucker (1973:64), for example, considers this view and defines marketing as follows:

• “Marketing is so basic that it cannot be considered a separate function. It is the whole business seen from the point of view of its final result, that is, from the customer’s point of view…Business success is not determined by the producer but by the customer.”

This author later adds – “Because the purpose of business is to create and keep customers, it has only two central functions – marketing and innovation. The basic function of marketing is to attract and retain customers at a profit” (1999:4).
This latter definition suggests that everyone who is involved in the marketing process of an organisation/festival, should ultimately consider the customer as being central to its activities. The notion of customer satisfaction is then the central pillar of marketing. This suggests that marketing involves an all-encompassing philosophy, which often means that an organisation/festival has to change its internal business culture to accommodate this new approach.
The American Marketing Association, cited in the Dictionary of Marketing Terms (1995) offers the following definition:

• “Marketing is the process of planning and executing the conception, pricing, promotion, and distribution of ideas, goods, services to create exchanges that satisfy individual and organizational goals.”

Dibb et al. (2001:5) give the following definition of marketing, which is similar to that of the American Marketing Association:

• “Marketing consists of individual and organisational activities that facilitate and expedite satisfying exchange relationships in a dynamic environment through the creation, distribution, promotion and pricing of goods, services and ideas.”

In the dynamic world of marketing, an effective solution to satisfying customer’s needs tends to be short-lived. Sunbathing on the beach no longer satisfies most tourists’ needs; special interest travel, therefore, has taken a dominant share of the market (Buhalis, 2001:71). (See the discussion in paragraph 2.3.1.2 which elaborates on the changing needs of tourists). Marketers should constantly study their customers’ requirements and be prepared to change their marketing activity accordingly. The assessment of marketing opportunities is an ongoing process, requiring regular revision and updating. The Chartered Institute of Marketing (Lynch, 1994:4), the professional body for practising marketers in the United Kingdom, defines marketing as:

• “The management process responsible for identifying, anticipating and satisfying customer requirements profitably.”

Although this definition has been criticised for its use of the word profitability, it is argued that non-profit-making organisations (such as arts festivals) can use the market philosophy to become more effective rather than simply more profitable.
The definition is useful in that it identifies the role of marketing as being to identify the needs and wants of customers both now and in the future, and then to meet them. Kotler (2004:30) refers to this as the traditional marketing approach and defines it as to “… find needs and fill them”.
He also notes that the challenge is to invent new needs “… by creating a new value proposition and/or a new business system that offers leaps in benefits and/or reductions in acquisitions efforts/costs” (Kotler, 2004:30). Nowadays, marketing should be understood in the new sense of satisfying customer needs.
This new sense refers to the theme connectedness which means that “… we are all connected to each other and to things near and far in the world around us” (Armstrong & Kotler, 2003:xvii).
The secondary literature has few definitions of marketing for festivals and events and none that are original in the South African context, apart from Tassiopoulos (2005:253) who cites Hall’s definition (1992) as quoted by Watt (1998:61) as “the function of event management that can keep in touch the event’s participants and visitors (consumers), read their needs and motivations, develop products that meet these needs, and build a communication programme which expresses the event’s purpose and objectives.”

ABSTRACT
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS 
FINANCIAL ASSISTANCE 
DECLARATION
ABBREVIATIONS
CHAPTER 1 BACKGROUND TO THE STUDY.
1.1 INTRODUCTION
1.2 PROBLEM STATEMENT
1.3 RESEARCH OBJECTIVES
1.4 RESEARCH METHODOLOGY OF THESIS
1.5 DEFINITIONS OF TERMS
1.6 ORGANISATION OF THESIS
CHAPTER 2 TAXONOMY OF TOURISM, SPECIAL INTEREST TOURISM: ARTS FESTIVALS AND EVENTS
2.1 INTRODUCTION
2.2 FLOW PROCESS OF THE TOURISM PHENOMENON
2.3 THE TOURISM PHENOMENON
2.4 SPECIAL INTEREST TOURISM (SIT)
2.5 FESTIVALS AND EVENTS
2.6 CONCLUSION
CHAPTER 3 MARKETING AND MARKET POSITIONING IN THE ARTS FESTIVAL CONTEXT.
3.1 INTRODUCTION
3.2 DEFINING MARKETING
3.3 MARKETING MIX
3.4 SEGMENTING FESTIVAL AND EVENT CUSTOMERS
3.5 MARKET POSITIONING
3.6 RESEARCH ON POSITIONING (MODELS OF POSITIONING)
3.7 FESTIVAL BRANDING
3.8 CONCLUSION
CHAPTER 4 RESEARCH METHODOLOGY
4.1 INTRODUCTION
4.2 ARTS FESTIVAL SCENARIOS
4.3 DEVELOPING THE SAMPLE PLAN
4.4 DESIGN THE RESEARCH INSTRUMENT
4.5 FIELDWORK: DATA COLLECTION AND EDITING
4.6 DATA CODING
4.7 DATA CAPTURING AND CLEANING.
4.8 DATA ANALYSIS
4.10 METHODOLOGICAL LIMITATIONS
4.11 CONCLUSION.
CHAPTER 5 ANALYSIS OF ARTS FESTIVAL DATA AND DISCUSSION OF RESULTS 
5.1 INTRODUCTION
5.2 DEMOGRAPHIC, GEOGRAPHIC AND BEHAVIOURAL CRITERIA OF RESPONDENTS AT THE THREE ARTS FESTIVAL SCENARIOS
5.3 CONJOINT ANALYSIS
5.4 GAME THEORY
5.5 CONCLUSION
CHAPTER 6  CONCLUSIONS AND RECOMMENDATIONS
6.1 INTRODUCTION
6.2 CONCLUSIONS AND RECOMMENDATIONS OF DATA ANALYSIS
6.3 PROPOSED MARKET-POSITIONING MODEL FOR ARTS FESTIVALS
6.4 CONTRIBUTIONS, CONFIRMATIONS, LIMITATIONS OF THE STUDY.
6.5 RECOMMENDATIONS FOR FUTURE RESEARCH.
6.6 CONCLUSION
LIST OF REFERENCES.
APPENDICES
GET THE COMPLETE PROJECT
OPTIMUM MARKET-POSITIONING MODELS FOR SOUTH AFRICAN ARTS FESTIVAL SCENARIOS