Approaches to diverse benefits of local festivals have been performed not only from practical business aspects but also from academic aspects with diverse interests.
At this time when the importance of empirical factors is emphasized, this research i...
Approaches to diverse benefits of local festivals have been performed not only from practical business aspects but also from academic aspects with diverse interests.
At this time when the importance of empirical factors is emphasized, this research is to examine the strategic approaches in which empirical factors of local festivals can maximize the brand assets based on the empirical marketing researches presented by Schmitt (1999).
The purpose of this research is to examine the effects of tourist events from a new point of view by testing the causal relate between the experience in local festivals and festival brand assets. Particularly, by performing the approaches from the strategic viewpoint about local festivals, I attempted to provide the opportunities to recognize the approaches as sales promotion of festivals and means of promotions (advertisements).
To achieve the purpose of this research, survey was conducted on the people, who visited the Cheonan Heungtaryeong Festival which had been chosen as the excellent festival by the Ministry of Culture and Tourism, were chosen as the subjects for this research, and the survey period was the period of 2 days from October 9, 2010 to October 10, 2010 during which the Cheonan Heungtaryeong Festival was being held, and the survey place was the Cheonan Samgeori Park.
The questionnaires were distributed and collected and the basic analysis, and factor analysis were conducted on the collected data by using SPSS WIN 17.0 and the reliability and validity of measuring tools were tested, and multiple regression analysis was conducted to test the established hypotheses.
The results of hypothesis testing through the empirical analysis are as follows.
First, the hypothesis that senses, feel, relate, act will have significant (+) effects on the brand awareness was adopted, and the hypothesis that the think experience will have effects on the brand awareness was rejected.
Second, the hypothesis that senses, feel, relate, act will have significant effects on the perceived quality was adopted, and the hypothesis that the think experience will have significant effects on the perceived quality was rejected.
Third, the hypothesis that senses, feel, relate, act will have significant effects on the brand associations was adopted, and the hypothesis that the sensuous experience will have significant effects on the brand associations was rejected.
Fourth, the hypothesis that senses, feel, relate, act will have significant effects on the brand preference was adopted, and Hypothesis that the emotional experience will have significant effects on the brand preference was rejected.
Fifth, the hypothesis that brand awareness, brand associations, and brand preference will have significant effects on the degree of satisfaction was adopted, and the hypothesis that the perceived quality will have significant effects on the degree of satisfaction was rejected.
The results derived from this research have the following implications from the academic point of view. First, through the conceptual approach to the experiences of local festivals, theoretical grounds for the related research fields could be established. Particularly, by reinterpreting the concepts that have been applied to leisure studies and tourism studies based on the researches related to local festivals, the approach to the concept and domain of experience from the viewpoint of local festivals became possible.
Second, in the existing leisure and tourism studies, the approach to the concept of experience was performed focusing on phenomenological or psychological aspect, so there have been limitations in its application in diverse tourism environment. But this research could present new approaches, together with the application of tourism environment by making researches in the strategic aspect, focusing on Schmitt (1999)’s strategic experience module.
Third, in this research, the approach to the empirical structure of local festivals focusing on the strategic experience module was conducted. The results of this research showed that senses, feel, think, and relate that constitute the strategic experience module were found to be 4 factors constituting the brand assets.
Based on the above-mentioned results, practical implications that can be applied to practical business are as follows.
First, it was verified that the attitude formed through the experience of local festivals was transferred to the brand assets of local festivals.
The strategic experience module approaching by dividing the experiences of the tourists into the factors such as senses, feel, think, and relate can examine the domain that the tourists participating local festivals can experience and make its development and operation easy.
Focusing on the strategic experience factors of local festivals, the ways of diversifying the evaluation of local festivals were presented by adding the evaluation of experience domain to the evaluation criteria that were limited to the existing service and physical environment. The results derived through the strategic evaluation of local festivals can be utilized as the ways of enhancing competitiveness of local festivals by positively applying them to planning local festivals.