The purpose of this study is to understand consumer behavior of musical theatres which have been growing tremendous year by year by representing the biggest share in performing arts. The musical theatre which has just entered into an initial stage of ...
The purpose of this study is to understand consumer behavior of musical theatres which have been growing tremendous year by year by representing the biggest share in performing arts. The musical theatre which has just entered into an initial stage of full-scale industrialization has a continuous task of audience development to move into a proper industry. Nevertheless, empirical studies on the musical theatre audiences have been insufficient. The studies done until now were mainly by examining performance audiences of various genres grouped in one or trying to comprehend consumer groups in a wider concept based on demography and lifestyle etc.
This study started with the needs for diverse and segmentalized investigation on consumer behavior especially aiming the audiences who have experienced a musical theatre to find out dissimilarities in the consumer behavior based on adoption time. The theory by Andreasen(1991) that audiences mature in phases when adopting performing arts indicates the necessity for a study on consumer behavior of the existing audiences which can be as valuable as the study for new audience development. Exiting audiences will develop into loyal customers and their viewing frequency will gradually increase when they were continuously given purchasing motives. We can also anticipate the expansion of performing arts market as a result. Therefore, consumer behavior between early adopters and late adopters according to the adoption time was examined in this study based on ‘Diffusion of Innovations Theory’ by Rogers(2003).
An empirical analysis was carried out by conducting a survey with the early adopters of a musical ‘Priscilla’ and the late adopters of a musical ‘Cats’. ‘Priscilla’ had its premiere at a large venue with over 1,200 seats but Korean audiences were not very aware of this musical since it was the first performance in Korea whereas the musical ‘Cats’ with its past several performances has earned acknowledgement and popularity.
The method of analysis was that each item was verified at significance level of p<.05, p<.01, p<.001, and SPSS WIN 18.0 program was used to process statistics. To measure the internal consistency for the measurement tool of tendency to a musical viewing, reliability analysis was carried out using Cronbach's α coefficient, and independent sample T-test was conducted to examine the difference in consumer characteristics and tendency between two groups.
The result of analysis from total eight study questions showed meaningful difference between the two groups.
First of all, in general characteristics, large portion of early adopters were females, over the age of 30, office workers with at least a bachelor's degree and professionals with high level of income. On the contrary, the late adopter group had higher number of males and the percentage of students was also higher. In case of the musical viewing characteristics, the viewing frequency of the early adopters was 30 times higher than the late adopters.
Secondly, there was a substantial difference between the two groups in information seeking, innovativeness and involvement. Early adopters more or less always watch their favorite performances in the quickest time possible, and they also engage in musical clubs and actively post their reviews online therefore musicals occupy a big part of their daily lives and thoughts. Early adopters can be considered as opinion leaders because of their high involvement and innovativeness. Early adopters are greatly influenced by the casting whereas late adopters tend to be influenced by the musical work itself rather than the casting. Both groups showed similar level of uncertainty which means that in designating the groups of innovators and late majority in the process of adoption, it is predicted that early adopters choose a work based on their knowledge and experience, and late adopters believe that adopting a proven work is the safe choice
Thirdly, in case of the source of information, early adopters gather information from the box office or online such as homepage and clubs, and late adopters tend to more rely on news and reviews and are more dependent on the information. Both groups were hugely affected by the promotion materials such as video clips, music, posters etc.
Fourthly, in case of the marketing factors, early adopters put more emphasis on their internal factors by manifesting notable difference from the late adopter group. Especially, they were influenced by the actor’s acting skills than popularity. As both groups consider music as being crucial, we can recognize the significance of music for a musical theatre. Both groups attach importance to the external factors showing no notable difference. Early adopters put much value on various discount deals since they are frequent musical-goers whereas late adopters who are expected to have higher situational involvement set more importance in the pleasantness of venue and comfortable seats.
This study is academically meaningful by empirically affirming that consumer groups with dissimilar characteristics exist in the lifecycle of performing arts by applying ‘Diffusion of Innovations Theory’ to musical theatres. Korean musical theatre market is exhibiting excessive supply compared to actual demand by exploding rapidly year by year with increasing number of productions. As a result, the cost of PR and promotion is also escalating continuously and only few productions succeed in the fierce competition. The outcome of the empirical study on consumer behavior of musical audience groups in the process of ‘Diffusion of Innovations’ is expected to contribute to the mapping out of PR and promotion strategies that suits the characteristics of a musical theatre.