An exploratory study about Portuguese Music Festivals’ Word-of-Mouth (WOM)

Abstract

Music festivals are crucial events in the Portuguese live show structure. There are hundreds per year, diverse in dimension, territory and musical genre, attracting millions of festivalgoers, who talk with their friends and family about it. Due to the social and experiential characteristics of music festivals, it is significantly important to find out how WOM is affecting their communication. There is a lack of research about which information and content constitutes Portuguese music festival’s WOM, through which channels it is spread, who is more susceptible of engaging in it, and how it can affect audiences. This dissertation aims to provide insights on this behalf. It is based on literature relating music festivals with marketing strategies, more specifically on word-of-mouth. It also analyzes the impact of content circulation on social media pages, affecting music festivals’ communication. A complementary purpose of this paper is to examine if the results vary according to type of festival and with audience demographic characteristics. Data were collected concerning six Portuguese music festivals – NOS Alive, Vodafone Paredes de Coura, NEOPOP, Festival Músicas do Mundo, EDPCOOLJAZZ and MUSA Cascais – through a web-based survey which gathered 288 respondents. The results show that information related with the lineup and useful details about the festival organization are the topics that festivalgoers search the most. What they prefer to share are visual memories from past editions, information about the lineup and content produced in real time during the event. Social media pages are their favorite channel to engage in both input and output WOM. By doing so, festivalgoers are also co-producers, acting as brand ambassadors of music festivals. The results also show that satisfied and recurrent festivalgoers are more propense of engaging in output WOM. Most of them were influenced by friends or relatives to attend the event. There were no big discrepancies between festivalgoers and non-festivalgoers’ perceptions towards the event. Other finding is that non-festivalgoers also engage in WOM. Even though advertising is the primary communication channel raising awareness about Portuguese music festivals, WOM also plays a significant role in regard to this matter.

Date of Award	18 Feb 2021
Original language	English
Awarding Institution	Universidade Católica Portuguesa
Supervisor	Ana Jorge (Supervisor)