Segmentation of music festival attendees

ABSTRACT

Festivals have seen a surge in both size and numbers leading to a more business-oriented festival management. Thus, knowledge regarding the audiences and consumption of festivals deserve more attention, and monetary properties such as ticket sales and partnerships have become focal points in festival management. All these aims can be achieved by market segmentation.

Festival Barometer is a longitudinal survey focused on the audiences of the largest Finnish rhythm music festivals. Using 7797 answers from the years 2014 and 2016, the audience was segmented using personal music preferences into groups named: hedonistic dance crowd, loyal heavy tribe and highly-educated omnivores.

The members of the loyal heavy tribe are the most confident about their future participation in festivals. The hedonistic dance crowd love to have fun, and highly-educated omnivores see festivals’ values important for them. However, music preferences might not necessarily indicate the respondent’s actual taste but rather the referential group that best reflects the festivalgoer’s own identity. Additionally, the meaning of the music is highest in the youngest age group and it will be replaced with other priorities as the person gets older. This indicates that the music festival organisers are forced to attract constantly a new younger audience.

KEYWORDS:

• Music festivals
• segmentation
• musical tastes
• marketing

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

ORCID

Maarit Kinnunen http://orcid.org/0000-0003-0337-7850

Mervi Luonila http://orcid.org/0000-0003-1021-5921

Antti Honkanen http://orcid.org/0000-0003-4150-8014

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by The University Consortium of Seinäjoki and The Finnish Cultural Foundation, Satakunta Regional Fund (grant to Dr. Mervi Luonila).