What really matters to the audience: analysing the key factors contributing to arts festival ticket purchases

Abstract

Competition in the South African arts festival market is an evident problem and is associated with changes in ticket purchase behaviour among performing arts patrons and declining ticket sales. This holds a negative implication for arts festivals, since visitors who purchase tickets tend to stay for longer periods and spend more than visitors not interested in ticketed shows/productions. Ticket sales from audiences are also one of festivals’ main sources of income. Targeting the visitors who attend these shows/productions is therefore a viable management goal. The focus of this article is to identify and analyse the key factors that contribute to ticket purchases at selected arts festivals in South Africa in order to provide festival organisers with the necessary insight to develop effective marketing strategies that target their ticket-purchasing market. A factor analysis was performed on the dataset of the two festivals and revealed seven factors; all of the Cronbach’s Alpha values were valid. Effect sizes were calculated to determine possible differences between categories pertaining to age and number of days the festival was attended. The results revealed no statistically significant differences and therefore suggest that this market is relatively homogenous. Managerial and marketing implications are consequently proposed for the festival organisers