Market segmentation of visitors to Aardklop National Arts Festival: a correspondence analysis

Abstract

Increasing levels of competition in the festival market have important implications for the profitability and survival prospects of South African arts/cultural festivals. In order for a festival to be sustainable, market segmentation can be an effective tool to divide existing and potential markets into homogeneous groups based on meaningful characteristics that could be profitably targeted. Against this background, the primary objective of this study was to segment, by means of a correspondence analysis, visitors to one of South Africa's largest arts festivals, namely the Aardklop National Arts Festival. Age was used as the segmentation variable in order to distinguish between differences in socio-demographic and behavioural characteristics between different age groups. A questionnaire survey (n = 1 671) was conducted annually at the festival, and data obtained from 2005 to 2008 were used. The results confirmed the existence of significant differences between different age groups. Based on these results, managerial and marketing implications are proposed for the festival organisers.