Expenditure-based Segmentation of Visitors to the Wacky Wine Festival

Abstract

The Wacky Wine Festival is the largest wine festival in South Africa with more than 15,000 visitors. An expenditure-based segmentation was completed in order to compile a profile of the low- and high-spenders who visit the Festival with the purpose of identifying the attributes of high-spenders. In order to achieve this, a survey was conducted in June 2010, when 400 questionnaires were administered to visitors at selected wine farms during the course of the festival. The methods used in the analysis included K-means clustering, factor analysis, Chi-Squared and independent t-tests, as well as ANOVA. The results indicate that both socio-demographic and behavioural aspects distinguish the high-spending festino from the low-spender. In particular gender, language, age, occupation, place of origin, group size and length of stay differ significantly between the clusters. In addition, the reasons why high-spenders attend the festival differ from that of low-spenders, with high-spenders placing more emphasis on the intrinsic motives for attending the festival.

Keywords:

• wine tourism
• tourist expenditure
• market segmentation
• cluster analysis
• Wacky Wine Festival