An Attitudinal Impacts Analysis of Social Media Platforms And Brand Relationship Quality at Music Festivals

Abstract

The purpose of this study is determination of ways in which music festival organizers can target their social media communication with greater certainty toward younger generations, i.e., Generation Z (also called “digital natives”). This research has two core purposes: the first is to investigate how music festivals’ use of social media can affect their brand relationship quality (BRQ) with their audience, and the second is to determine how connecting to online brand communities prior to, during, and after a music festival affects the satisfaction and loyalty of attendees. The research follows a positivist epistemological framework and a deductive research approach. The research design grew from a collected body of e-research and uses asynchronous data from the social media platform Twitter to understand consumers’ perception of brands in a music festival context. A social network analysis framework is applied. The findings show that social media does affect brand experience, brand image transfer, and BRQ in a positive way and that social media can, therefore, strengthen BRQ with Generation Z music event attendees. The results indicate that music festivals can strengthen BRQ with young consumers through social networking platforms if digital marketing strategies are utilized to their full potential. Reflection is made of the psycho-social value of this networking for young people at a time of socio-economic turbulence. The practical implications for these findings are also discussed.

Investigating the Impact of Event Experience on Satisfaction and Behavioural Intention of Music Event Audiences

“…Furthermore, understanding the strong influence of consumer satisfaction on behavioural intentions, organizers should actively encourage attendee advocacy. Implementing social media engagement initiatives and post-event activities strategies can help capture and leverage positive word-of-mouth (Strand & Robertson, 2020). A simple strategy to promote the action of sharing highlights and captivating moments by creating specific hashtags and interactive posts will prompt user-generated content.…”

The festival customer experience: a conceptual framework

“…For example, for older customers, events have been found to be more significant than online tools in building brand relationships and experiences; digital technologies may complement face-to-face interactions but not replace them (Stokburger-Sauer, 2010). However, for younger customers, digital marketing strategies and festival integrated marketing communications that positively communicate the brand and provide customer service through social media can strengthen brand experience, brand image transfer and brand relationship quality (Strand and Robertson, 2020).…”

Topic modelling of festival-visitors' opinions: A case study of Sziget Festival

“…Despite a wealth of research, most of the articles examined festival experiences with questionnaires or other qualitative methods such as semi-structured interviews or observations. Social media as data source in music festival research is less common (see Brown et al, 2020;Carah & Angus, 2018;Danielsen & Kjus, 2019;de Lira et al, 2019;Gilstrap et al, 2021;Hudson & Hudson, 2013;Hudson et al, 2015;Strand & Robertson, 2020). The data was collected from the guest reviews section publicly available on the Sziget Festival Official Facebook page.…”

“…While this kind of social media communication is reduced during the live experience (as it moves offline), it continues after the event. Third, from a marketing perspective, eWOM was found to strengthen the music festival -customer relationship with young consumers (Strand & Robertson, 2020). Finally, eWOM provides marketing managers with an opportunity to extend their communications reach in a cost-effective, and even more importantly, a trustworthy way (Ismagilova et al, 2017).…”