Recently many local governments are holding regional festivals in order for the harmonious and happy lives of residents and boosting of regional economies, however festivals which lack of regional characteristics, proper participants, and festivals wh...
Recently many local governments are holding regional festivals in order for the harmonious and happy lives of residents and boosting of regional economies, however festivals which lack of regional characteristics, proper participants, and festivals which are not distinctive and are far from participants’ satisfaction are increasing burdens to local economies.
Hence, in these days local governments are utilizing various strategies such as the introduction of experimental factors, service education for festival staff, and expansion of convenience facilities to enhance the satisfaction of visitors. The service quality strategy is to hold the competitive edges in the severe competition areas, and it is adopted not only in service industry but also in local festivals.
Since the securing of customers satisfaction and customers loyalties has a direct impact to the companies profits and growth, so the importance of customers satisfaction and customers loyalties is ever increasing, and many companies are endeavoring to enhance their service quality.
That is, first of all, customers satisfaction and future behavioral intention are the important subject of study in order to maximize the economic effect from the holding of festivals so far as the local festivals are aiming at the activation of local economies.
Consequently the visitors of local festivals will come again, be positive speakers, and will have high intention for recommendation only when they are satisfied with the service quality of festivals, and these factors can create more visitors, and will be a big help to the activation of local economies.
So, this study, for the Buan Masil Festival as a subject, aimed to draft a plan for activation of local economy by enhancing visitors satisfaction, re-visiting, and behavioral intention for recommendation through upgrading service quality of local festivals as a strategy for activation of local economies, and local festivals which are being held competitively by many local governments.
To accomplish the goal of this study, a hypothesis and a model were set up to verify how the composition factors of service quality of local festival such as festival guidance, programs, festival souvenir, food, and festival convenience facilities affect the satisfaction of festival visitors, and these satisfaction have impacts on the future behavioral intention and festival performance, and finally influencing relationship between behavioral intention and festival performance.
The questionnaire for positive analysis was conducted in the Buan Sports Park and Grass Plaza which were the main festival places during the 2nd Buan Masil Festival for 3 days from 3 May to 5 May. the total of 500 set of questionnaire were distributed to the people who participated in Buan Masil Festival. Out of this number, around 487 questionnaires were collected, and some cases which a large portion of survey was not answered were also excluded from the survey. In the event, a total of 435 questionnaires were used for the analyses.
After data coding, the statistics processing for the collected data in this study utilized the statistic package for social science 18.0 and AMOS 18.0, and various analyses were conducted like frequency analysis to get frequency and percent for demographic factors, visitors’ satisfaction, and behavioral intention of the samples, descriptive statistics to get mean and standard deviation of the variables, t-test and variance analysis to see the differences between the satisfaction of local festival and behavioral intention according to the characteristics of demographics.
And for the verification of the soundness of measuring variances, factor analysis and confirmatory factor analysis were carried out, and to verify the reliability of measured questionnaire items, Cronbach’s a index were calculated. And correlation analysis was carried out to analyze corelation among measuring variances, and finally structure equation modeling was done to verify the influence relation of established study model and study hypothesis.
Some suggestions were identified from the results of analysis.
The satisfaction of festivals was increased as the visitors perceived that the contents of the festivals are various and interesting, and the visitors have better understandings for local cultures through participating programs and favors for experience programs, and that there are good supporting & connecting systems for near sightseeing places, and convenient car parking facilities.
And, the visitors have the high intention of re-visiting and positive spreading of good word by mouth as there are sufficient pamphlet or leaflet or guidance through festival web site, and there are good information service by the guide staff in the festival places, and there are various good taste foods which are selling in the festival places at reasonable price.
The analysis also showed that the festival performance can be achieved through enhancing the visitors’ satisfaction and behavioral intention, and upgrading the quality of festival guidance.
That is, every local government, the host of local festival, should pay attention to the development and expansion of good sightseeing places in order for festival visitors to have satisfaction for near sightseeing places after looking around those places due to the good supporting facilities of the link of sightseeing places near the local festival places.
In addition, to increase the satisfaction of festival visitors, the quality of programs should be enhanced through the diversification of contents of festival, adding amusement factors, and expansion of experience programs, also by including publicizing and education for local cultures.
For the various information channels of festivals, the existing channels need to be supplemented, and as new channels, the development and distribution of smartphone applications for smartphone users, guide map placed around festival places, and installation of information kiosk for easy approaching to information through screen touch.
And development of folk foods which have local cultural characteristics for making known of proper price and various quality festival foods, and continuous efforts for the realization of proper price of foods are necessary.
with the foregoing efforts, the satisfaction of festival visitors and behavioral intention can be enhanced, consequently festival performance will be uplifted, and finally the boosting of local economy will be achieved.