Events and Tourism Review Events and Tourism Review Vol. 7 No. 1 (2024), 18-33, DOI: 10.18060/28150 Copyright © 2024 Hyungsuk Choo This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. Events and Tourism Review December 2024 Volume 7 No. 1 Segmentation of Local Agricultural Festivals for Collaborative Marketing Hyungsuk Choo Bowling Green State University Correspondence: hchoo@bgsu.edu (H. Choo) For Authors Interested in submitting to this journal? We recommend that you review the About the Journal page for the journal's section policies, as well as the Author Guidelines. Authors need to register with the journal prior to submitting or, if already registered, can simply log in and begin the five-step process. For Reviewers If you are interested in serving as a peer reviewer, please register with the journal. Make sure to select that you would like to be contacted to review submissions for this journal. Also, be sure to include your reviewing interests, separated by a comma. About Events and Tourism Review (ETR) ETR aims to advance the delivery of events, tourism and hospitality products and services by stimulating the submission of papers from both industry and academic practitioners and researchers. For more information about ETR visit the Events and Tourism Review. Recommended Citation Choo, H. (2024). Segmentation of Local Agricultural Festivals for Collaborative Marketing. Events and Tourism Review, 7(1), 18-33. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ mailto:hchoo@bgsu.edu http://journals.iupui.edu/index.php/jet/about http://journals.iupui.edu/index.php/jet/about/submissions#authorGuidelines http://journals.iupui.edu/index.php/jet/user/register http://journals.iupui.edu/index.php/jet/user/register http://journals.iupui.edu/index.php/index/login https://journals.iupui.edu/index.php/ETR/user/register http://journals.iupui.edu/index.php/ETR Choo, H. (2024) / Events and Tourism Review, 7(1), 18-33. 19 Events and Tourism Review Vol. 7 No. 1 (2024), 18-33, DOI: 10.18060/28150 Copyright © 2024 Hyungsuk Choo This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. Abstract This study aims to explore the heterogeneity of local agricultural festival attendees by adopting a collaborative marketing approach which enables cross-retention of festival attendees among multiple local agricultural festivals. Using the data collected from the on-site survey at three local agricultural festivals, this study conducted the cluster analysis. Findings indicate the viability of variety seeking and festival loyalty as segmentation criteria involving multiple local agricultural festivals together and suggested four clusters, Multi Festival Goers, One Festival Goers, Other Festival Goers, and No Returners. Each cluster demonstrates discrete behavioral and geographic characteristics about their local agricultural festival experience. Keywords: Variety Seeking, Festival Loyalty, Local Agricultural Festival, Segmentation, and Collaboration Introduction Local festivals are recognized for their contribution to the social and economic benefits of local communities and destinations. Scholars argue that local festivals can boost local tourism demand, improve the identity of a local community, and provide tourism opportunities during off- peak seasons (Chang, W., 2011; Park, Reisinger, & Kang, 2008). As local festivals are increasingly viewed as tourism attractions attracting both tourists and residents, their number and diversity have grown significantly. In an increasingly competitive environment, it is not enough local festivals concentrate on identifying and satisfying the need of their own attendees. To compete, survive and thrive, they must identify new opportunities and niche, often through collaborations with other local festivals, while still catering to the need of their own attendees. Scholars suggest that local festivals within the same region can develop collaboration to jointly market their products, programs, brand images, or attendees for mutual benefit and local sustainability (Bramwell & Sharman, 1999; Choo & Park, 2018; Clarke, 1999). Similar to the co-branding or brand alliance in marketing, such collaborating festivals can leverage a series of joint marketing activities to create the marketing synergy (Che, Veeck, & Veeck, 2005). Rural tourism scholars also emphasize the role of a collaborative approach for each unit of rural tourism operations where their marketing resources are often scarce (Clarke, 1999; Helmig, Huber, & Leeflang, 2007; McComb, Boyd, & Boluk, 2017) However, research on the collaborative approach in rural tourism and local festivals, particularly in the segmentation studies remains scarce. While segmentation techniques have been developed over the past 40 years to assist local festival agencies in classifying distinct groups of attendees, they have primarily focused on individual festivals. There is a lack of segmentation studies focusing on the collaborative approach among local festivals, which would enable to share, extend, and cross-retain their attendees. Different from conventional segmentation approaches for single brands, services, or companies, segmentation for the collaborative approach among local festivals requires identifying markets not only from their own but also from their collaborative partners to expand their attendees https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ Choo, H. (2024) / Events and Tourism Review, 7(1), 18-33. 20 Events and Tourism Review Vol. 7 No. 1 (2024), 18-33, DOI: 10.18060/28150 Copyright © 2024 Hyungsuk Choo This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. base and cross-retain attendees across festivals. This study therefore sets out to develop a segmentation framework to assist a group of local festivals in implementing collaborative marketing activities to attract, satisfy, and retain their respective targeted attendees, while also cross-attracting/retaining some of their attendees from collaborating festivals. Specifically, the first part of the research explores the possibility of grouping local festival attendees into distinct sub-segments based on their similarities and differences in variety seeking and festival loyalty. The research then ascertains whether statistically significant differences exist between the resulting segments in terms of psychographic and demographic variables. To achieve this, the following section begins with a review of literature on market segmentation, followed by an outline of the research methodology and its findings. Finally, the study discusses the marketing implications of its findings. Literature Review 1. Local Agricultural Festivals Local festivals have always held significant importance in human culture and history, prevalent across diverse local regions. They serve a crucial role in uniting people, promoting social cohesion, and commemorating shared traditions and values. Typically centered around distinct aspects of a community, some festivals often trace their origins to agriculture, which sustains life by providing essential food resources. Agriculture thus forms a vital component of the economic, social, and environmental fabric of local communities. While food is indispensable to all festivals, local agricultural festivals specifically highlight and celebrate the local food systems. They provide opportunities for farming communities to showcase their agricultural products, creating awareness that can translate into both onsite and future purchases (Choo & Park, 2017). Attendees can sample and purchase fresh produce harvested from local farms, immerse themselves in culinary traditions and cultural heritage, and enjoy entertainment including you-pick and farming practice activities, cooking, petting zoos with various farm animals and displays of large farm machinery like tractors and plows (Barbieri, Cernusca, Gold, & Aguilar, 2009). Given the intimate connection between agriculture and the natural environment, these festivals also contribute to raising awareness about food security and the conservation of natural resources. 2. Market Segmentation of Local Festivals: A Collaborative Approach A series of methods for segmenting markets in the tourism and festival research allow researchers and practitioners to identify groups of consumers and ultimately to formulate the marketing objectives and activities. These methods range from a priori segmentation to a data- driven posteriori technique based upon identifying consumers’ lifestyle and psychographics using the constructs, such as involvement, motivation, expenditure, satisfaction, lifestyle, trip purpose and etc. In the last few decades, scholars have conducted a series of segmentation studies for various types of festivals at different regions to help guide individual festivals to segment their attendees (Formica & Uysal, 1995; Lee, Choong-Ki, Lee, & Wicks, 2004; Li, Huang, & Cai, 2009; Shi, Ji, Weaver, & Huang, 2022). However, segmentation can also be done to help a group of local festivals to jointly identify their market, not only attract and retain their own attendees but also to cross- https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ Choo, H. (2024) / Events and Tourism Review, 7(1), 18-33. 21 Events and Tourism Review Vol. 7 No. 1 (2024), 18-33, DOI: 10.18060/28150 Copyright © 2024 Hyungsuk Choo This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. attract and cross-retain their attendees, or cross-promote attending other local festivals. Many local festival attendees are known to be interested in other local festivals as well as one they attend (Choo & Park, 2018). Local festivals are held for a certain time frame periodically, seasonally, or annually. Attendees do not necessarily choose to attend one over the other as long as festival dates don’t overlap. Attendees who are loyal to one festival can also be interested in other festivals, especially when driven by their variety seeking. Therefore, local festivals held in different dates and those offering different programs or theme can work together to promote attending each other’s festivals. Regardless, most festival segmentation research focus on a single unit of an individual festival, implicitly assuming to compete each other to retain its own attendees. As many local regions have an increasing number of local festivals, it is common they implicitly and explicitly compete to attract their attendees, retaining them only for themselves for future (Fyall & Garrod, 2005). The fragmented nature of the multifaceted tourism industry creates a recognized need for collaborative marketing among different sectors as they carry out complementary activities for tourism - (Bramwell & Lane, 2000). In recent years, collaboration opportunities have been also recognized within the same sectors, e.g., strategic alliance between airlines. Similarly, local festivals can collaborate in many ways, including cross-retaining their attendees (Can, Ekinci, & Pino, 2021). To facilitate this, it is important to segment the local festival market, which can involve multiple local festivals sharing their attendees together through a collaborative approach. 3. Local Festival Segmentation The local festival employs four typical segmentation criteria: demographic, psychographic, behavioral, and geographic variables. Initially, demographic and geographic variables were commonly used in festival and tourism segmentation research due to their direct observability and practicality. However, there is a growing trend among researchers to also incorporate psychographic and behavioral variables to predict decisions related to product and brand choices. This study focuses on two specific variables - variety-seeking and festival loyalty - to explore the segmentation potential across multiple local festivals and their attendees. Variety- seeking reflects consumers' desire for excitement, uniqueness, novelty, and curiosity, influencing their propensity to switch products and brands (Jung & Yoon, 2012). Traditionally, it has been viewed as potentially detrimental to individual product or brand loyalty. Conversely, a collaborative marketing approach involving multiple products or brands acknowledges that variety-seeking can actually foster cross-retention among customers of those products or brands (Choo & Park, 2018). This approach harnesses variety-seeking behavior to positively impact customer retention across diverse festivals which are similar in their themes or located nearby. 3.1. Variety-Seeking Variety-seeking behavior in consumption refers to consumers switching among products, categories, or brands to avoid the decreasing utility due to repeat purchases or consumption of the same products (Ratner & Kahn, 2002). Consumers seek variety to manage satiation, to hedge https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ Choo, H. (2024) / Events and Tourism Review, 7(1), 18-33. 22 Events and Tourism Review Vol. 7 No. 1 (2024), 18-33, DOI: 10.18060/28150 Copyright © 2024 Hyungsuk Choo This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. against uncertainty or to search for novelty (Sevilla, Lu, & Kahn, 2019). Consumers buy an array of diversified products even if they are satisfied with one particular product. For this reason, marketers have sought to find ways to reduce the amount of variety consumers incorporate to keep them loyal to their products and brands. On the contrary, some researchers have recently suggested that companies create variety, yet retaining the customers (Sheorey, Joshi, & Kulkarni, 2014). In the product category marketing, which is designed to increase the demand of products and brands within their general category, variety seeking among customers can help them stay loyal by trying different products and brands available within the same product category (Tuu & Olsen, 2013). This means, variety seeking can play a positive role in the product category loyalty, different from its typical negative role in the one brand or one product loyalty. Marketing of multiple products and brands with the same product category needs to allow customers to variety-seek and gain the utility derived from stimulation of something different, thus leading to loyalty toward the same category products and brands. For this, the importance of accessibility of products and brands in the same product category has been recognized. Product category marketing is important in the local festival as promoting and publicizing a group of local festivals together or a general category of local festivals occurring/staging in the local region is needed. One certain festival attendees can attend other festivals as well or switch over to other festivals if they don’t want to re-visit the festival attended. Local festivals are increasingly being used as instruments for promoting tourism and boosting the regional local economy. Promoting a single unit of each local festival is not always effective, particularly for variety seekers. Variety-seeking has been adopted to provide an effective market segmentation standard for enterprises (Trivedi, 1999) but most of those adopt it for one brand or one type of product. By applying variety seeking in the market segmentation involving multiple local festivals which can collaborate together, this study will contribute to local festival segmentation research where a single unit of one festival approach is predominant. 3.2. Festival Loyalty Most local festivals occur on a regular basis, monthly, seasonally, or annually, so festival loyalty indicating intentions to revisit and recommend those to others is important. Due to this importance, scholars have actively identified a series of antecedents of festival loyalty, and examples of those include authenticity (Akhoondnejad, 2016), festival quality (Wong, Wu, & Cheng, 2015), festival value (Lee, Jin-Soo, Lee, & Choi, 2011), involvement (Beckman, Shu, & Pan, 2020), place attachment (Lee, Jenny, Kyle, & Scott, 2012), social identity (Grappi & Montanari, 2011), and satisfaction (Tanford & Jung, 2017). While these concepts have been found to positively influence festival loyalty in the diverse ranges of festivals, all of those studies have focused on loyalty to a single, individual festival, which reflects attendees’ intention to visit the same festival again. Although the loyalty concept to a single, individual unit of a brand and service is generally common in marketing, the multi-unit loyalty involving multiple tiers of tourism services or multiple destinations has been increasingly recognized in the tourism literature (Almeida-Santana & Moreno- Gil, 2018; McKercher, Denizci-Guillet, & Ng, 2012a). Partly due to the variety (or novelty) seeking inherently embedded in the tourists’ mind, their loyalty is not always toward a single unit destination, brand and service. Given this, McKercher, Denizci-Guillet, and Ng (2012b) extended https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ Choo, H. (2024) / Events and Tourism Review, 7(1), 18-33. 23 Events and Tourism Review Vol. 7 No. 1 (2024), 18-33, DOI: 10.18060/28150 Copyright © 2024 Hyungsuk Choo This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. the conceptualization of loyalty to three dimensions: vertical (loyalty to different tiers, i.e., to an airline and a travel agent), horizontal (loyalty to more than one provider in the same tier, i.e., to more than one hospitality brand), and experiential (loyalty to certain holiday styles). Based on in- depth interviews, the authors confirmed vertical and experiential loyalty, but found less evidence for horizontal loyalty. In the marketing literature, the relevance of horizontal loyalty is still recognized in the concept of co-branding or co-marketing of multiple brand together. Although loyalty to a single unit of a brand and service is a common concept in marketing, the tourism literature increasingly acknowledges multi-unit loyalty, which involves multiple tiers of tourism services or destinations (Almeida-Santana & Moreno-Gil, 2018; McKercher, Denizci- Guillet, & Ng, 2012). This trend is partly attributed to the inherent variety-seeking nature of tourists' preferences, which doesn't always align with loyalty to a single destination, brand, or service. In response, McKercher et al. (2012) expanded the concept of loyalty to include three dimensions: vertical (loyalty to different tiers, such as an airline and a travel agent), horizontal (loyalty to multiple providers within the same tier, like multiple hospitality brands), and experiential (loyalty to specific holiday styles). Through in-depth interviews, the authors validated vertical and experiential loyalty but found limited evidence for horizontal loyalty. However, in marketing literature, the importance of horizontal loyalty persists, evident in concepts such as co-branding or co-marketing multiple brands together. The horizontal multi-unit loyalty can also be applied in local festivals, which occur at various locations and in the various time frame. Attendees to one festival might be also interested in another, as well as the one they are attending (Tingchi Liu et al., 2012). Or, they don’t necessarily want to revisit the current festival, but would still like to explore other festivals, instead. Therefore, loyalty to one local festival can be extended into other local festivals in the local region, involving collaboration among some local festivals. Research Methodology 1. Measurement Measurement of variables in this study was adopted from the previous study to establish the content validity. The self-administered intercept survey questionnaire was developed. Five-point Likert-type scale (one = Not likely at all to five = Very much likely) was used for motivation (Maeng, Jang, & Li, 2016), variety seeking (Jung & Yoon, 2012), satisfaction, festival loyalty (Lee, Jin-Soo, Lee, & Choi, 2011), and intention to visit other festivals. The first section asked about the festival experience, the total spending at the festival, the number of local agricultural products purchased, etc. The second section was about festival perception involving festival motivation, variety seeking tendency, and satisfaction. The third section measured the festival loyalty (e.g., Intention to visit the festival, Intention to visit other agricultural festivals, and Willingness to recommend the festival to others). The final section asked the socio-demographic information on attendees. The questionnaire was written in English, and then translated into Korean by two researchers who are fluent in both English and Korean. Back translation following the recommendations of (Hogg, Liao, & O'Gorman, 2014) ensured translation accuracy. Both Korean https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ Choo, H. (2024) / Events and Tourism Review, 7(1), 18-33. 24 Events and Tourism Review Vol. 7 No. 1 (2024), 18-33, DOI: 10.18060/28150 Copyright © 2024 Hyungsuk Choo This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. and English versions of survey were used for onsite survey. 2. Data Collection and Analysis The data used in this study were drawn from a segment of a larger visitor profile study conducted during three local agricultural festivals held in August, September and October, 2019 in Chungchungnam-Do, the central region of South Korea, Chunahn Grape Festival, Goesan Pepper Festival, and Boun Dates Festival. On the first or the second day of each festival, three trained undergraduate students were sent to the site. Participants were informed that their participation was voluntary and confidentiality was ensured before they proceeded to fill out the questionnaire. Every 5th attendees were approached and obtained a sample of 311 useful responses, with the response rate of 32%. 3. Data Analysis Cluster analysis was adopted to identify the variation among festival attendees in their variety seeking tendency and festival loyalty. Subsequently, a series of Chi-square tests were conducted to compare the demographic characteristics, satisfaction and motivation in the segments identified in the previous step. Interpretability, cluster size, dendrogram structure and presence of statistically significant differences between the clusters were all considered when deciding the optimal cluster solution, suggested by Kaufman and Rousseeuw (2009). Results of Analysis 1. Segmentation of Respondents A four-cluster solution was found to display significant inter-cluster differences in variety seeking tendency and festival loyalty of the respondents and their evident interpretability (Table 1). The four segments include Multi-festival goers (39.3% of the sample) who intend to revisit the current festival and also visit other local agricultural festivals; Other Festival Goers (28.7% of the sample) who do not intend to visit the current festival but would like to visit other local agricultural festivals; One Festival Goers (24.9% of the sample) who intend to revisit the current festival but do not intend to visit other festivals; and No Returners (7.1% of the sample) who do not intend to visit any festival in the future. 2. Demographic and Behavioral Characteristics of the Clusters There are more female attendees across festivals. One Festival Goers tend to be older and local residents who reside in the city where each festival is held. Both Multi Festival Goers and Other Festival Goers tend to be visitors who travel to the city to attend the festival. Table 1. Result of Cluster Analysis (N = 331) Multi-festival goers (N=130; 39.3%) One-festival goers (N=95; 28.7%) Other-festival goers (N=90; 24.9%) No returners (N=16; 7.1%) Variety seeking 4.10 3.19 3.88 3.24 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ Choo, H. (2024) / Events and Tourism Review, 7(1), 18-33. 25 Events and Tourism Review Vol. 7 No. 1 (2024), 18-33, DOI: 10.18060/28150 Copyright © 2024 Hyungsuk Choo This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. Festival Loyalty I intend to visit the current festival again 4.20 4.11 2.67 2.50 I’ll recommend this festival to my friends 3.89 4.29 3.50 2.90 I’ll say positive things about the festival 3.91 4.11 3.61 2.69 I intend to visit other local festivals 4.13 3.39 3.99 2.99 No Returners comprise of both local residents and out-of-towners. Over one third of the Multi Festival Goers have visited more than three local festivals in the past and no difference of spending at the festival among three festival goers clusters (Table 2). 3. Satisfaction and Festival Loyalty of the Four Clusters The data shows relatively high satisfaction with the festivals they attended as the mean satisfaction of the four clusters is 3.87 out of 5 scale. Among these four clusters, Multi Festival Goers show the highest level of satisfaction (meanMulti Sa = 3.99), while other-festival goers and one festival goers are similar in their satisfaction level (meanOther Sa = = 3.71, and meanOne Sa = 3.69) (Table 3). Satisfaction of No Returners was significantly lower than other three clusters (mean= 3.00). Multi Festival Goers, showing the highest level of satisfaction among the four clusters, form the highest level of intention to visit the festival they attended (meanMulti Rev 4.20) (Table 1). Table 2. Demographic and Behavioral Profile of the Clusters (N = 331) Multi-festival goers (N=130; 39.3%) One-festival goers (N=95; 28.7%) Other-festival goers (N=90; 24.9%) No returners (N=16; 7.1%) Demographic profile Gender (X2 = .75, p=.86) Female Male 51.54 48.46 52.63 47.37 52.26 47.74 60.50 37.50 Age (X2 = 18.53, p<.00) 18-39 40-59 60+ 30.77 49.23 20.00 16.84 40.00 43.16 26.67 51.11 22.22 31.25 50.00 31.25 Education (X2 = 43.00, p<.00) High school or lower College or lower Post graduate work or above 14.62 67.69 17.69 49.47 43.16 7.37 18.89 73.33 7.78 18.75 62.50 18.75 Residency (X2 = 66.95, p<.00) City where the festival is held Other 23.85 76.15 61.05 38.95 21.11 78.99 50.00 50.00 Spending (X2 = 6.65, p=.35) 50,000 Won or less 50,000-150,000 Won 150,000 or more 6.15 34.62 59.23 5.26 43.16 51.58 2.22 42.22 55.56 12.50 50.00 37.50 Local agricultural festival experience % (X2 = 24.43, p<.05) Never 1 time 2 times 6.15 27.69 27.69 5.26 31.58 42.11 4.44 27.78 43.33 18.75 25.00 43.75 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ Choo, H. (2024) / Events and Tourism Review, 7(1), 18-33. 26 Events and Tourism Review Vol. 7 No. 1 (2024), 18-33, DOI: 10.18060/28150 Copyright © 2024 Hyungsuk Choo This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. 3 times 38.46 21.05 24.44 12.50 Between One Festival Goers and Other Festival Goers who report the similar level of high satisfaction, the former intends to revisit the festival (meanOne Rev = = 4.11) while latter cluster does not do so (meanOther Rev = = 2.67). Intention to visit other local agricultural festivals was found to be highest between Multi Festival Goers and Other Festival Goers (meanMulti Oth = = 4.13, and meanOther Oth = 3.99), followed by One Festival Goers (meanOne Oth = 3.39). Among the clusters, One Festival Goers intend to recommend the festival to others (meanOne Rec = = 4.29) higher than Multi Festival Goers (meanMulti Rec = = 3.89) and Other Festival Goers (meanOther Rec = = 3.50). No Returners are not likely to recommend the festival to others. 4. Festival Motivation Average scores for the multi-dimensional factors of festival motivation were computed for subsequent ANOVA tests, which revealed significant differences among the four segments (Table 3). In particular, Multi Festival Goers are more motivated by Food; Other Festival Goers are more likely to attend the agricultural food festival for Escape/Novelty; while One Festival Goers tend to visit the festival to socialize with people sharing similar interests. Table 3. Satisfaction and Motivation of the Clusters (N = 331) Multi-festival goers (N=130; 39.3%) One-festival goers (N=95; 28.7%) Other-festival goers (N=90; 24.9%) No returners (N=16; 7.1%) Satisfaction 3.99 3.69 3.71 3.00 Motivation Local food (F = 8.92; p<.05) 3.71 3.34 3.40 3.24 Escape/Novelty (F = 7.11; p<.04) 3.50 3.46 3.81 3.29 Socialization (F = 10.09; p<.00) 3.49 3.74 3.59 3.33 Learning (F = 1.02; p=.14) 3.33 3.24 3.21 3.24 Discussion and Implications This study analyzes the heterogeneity of local agricultural food festival attendees by adopting a collaborative marketing approach which enables cross-retention of festival attendees between multiple festivals. Findings indicates the viability of variety seeking and festival loyalty as segmentation criteria of multiple local agricultural festivals. Each of the four clusters identified demonstrate discrete behavioral and geographic characteristics of local agricultural festivals. Result of analysis suggests that individual local agricultural festivals need to primarily target One Festival Goers and Multi Festival Goers to retain them for their own future festivals. A group of local agricultural festivals combined can also cross-target Other Festivals Goers and Multi Festival Goers to cross-retain them and develop a collaborative marketing activity. For Other Festival Goers, local agricultural festivals can promote attending other collaborating local agricultural festivals, as they would like to explore other local agricultural festivals, instead of attending the current one again. Multi Festival Goers can be mutually targeted between the collaborating local agricultural https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ Choo, H. (2024) / Events and Tourism Review, 7(1), 18-33. 27 Events and Tourism Review Vol. 7 No. 1 (2024), 18-33, DOI: 10.18060/28150 Copyright © 2024 Hyungsuk Choo This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. festivals. It is important to convince them not only to revisit the festivals in the future but also to explore other local festivals which are located around and/or offer similar programs and activities. By engaging in this collaborative approach shared by some agricultural local festivals, they can broaden their attendee market and cross-retain some of their attendees. In the marketing, this type of collaborating activity among independent entities are well recognized in various terms, co-branding, brand alliance, brand partnership or strategic alliance (Helmig, Huber, & Leeflang, 2007). Characteristics and forms of each activity listed are not always similar, but all of these seek to have spillover effects and increase the market share by capitalizing and sharing unique resources of each partner (Pinello, Picone, & Mocciaro Li Destri, 2022). For local agricultural festivals, where their marketing resource is not sufficiently available, the collaboration activity can help use and share their marketing resource efficiently and effectively (Da Liang, Nie, Chen, & Chen, 2020). Furthermore, a type of collaboration activity among local agricultural festivals can help avoid unnecessary competition among them, if any. In the last few decades, the number of local festivals has increased locally and globally, thus increasing competition implicitly and explicitly among them to attract and retain their attendees (Maeng, Jang, & Li, 2016). Different from commercial market where competition is a common, accepted paradigm, local agricultural festivals perform more of a public function in the local community, which seeks to co-exist and support for each other. They communicate and reinforce their distinct value while leveraging aspects of other collaborating festivals’ value—often referred to as positive spillover (Kim, Lee, & Lee, 2007). The finding of this study is consistent with previous studies (Almeida-Santana & Moreno- Gil, 2018; McKercher, Denizci-Guillet, & Ng, 2012a), which suggested the relevance of multi-unit or horizontal loyalty manifesting that tourists can show loyalty to multiple destinations and different suppliers at the same level within the tourism system. Many satisfying tourists do not necessarily to go back to the same destination for their next vacation, but instead they choose to explore different destinations specially for the short period of time within a few years (Almeida-Santana & Moreno- Gil, 2018). Search for something new or novel is often considered to be inherent among tourists (Jang & Feng, 2007), so a single unit loyalty to one single destination won’t always work. While having a satisfied attendees is a commendable goal that is not to be questioned (Melian-Gonzalez, Moreno-Gil, & Arana, 2011), its impact on loyalty needs to be re-examined in the local festival context. Some festival studies have reported a weak relationship between satisfaction and loyalty, their relationship is not universally strong for all segments (Chang, S., Gibson, & Sisson, 2014), or the actual revisit is often significantly lower than their intention to revisit (Chaney and Martin, 2017). Therefore, festivals can’t just blindly seek satisfaction in the hopes achieving festival loyalty and revisit. Some scholars offer strategic insights for practitioners to identify the difference of customer segments and the varying impact of satisfaction on loyalty (Melian-Gonzalez, Moreno-Gil, & Arana, 2011; Petrick, 2005). It is important to recognize one of segments identified, attendees who do not intend to revisit the festival, although satisfied. Most of them are interested in visiting other local festivals instead, so promoting other local agricultural festivals aiming at this segment of attendees is practically useful. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ Choo, H. (2024) / Events and Tourism Review, 7(1), 18-33. 28 Events and Tourism Review Vol. 7 No. 1 (2024), 18-33, DOI: 10.18060/28150 Copyright © 2024 Hyungsuk Choo This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. Variety seeking is a popular choice strategy in varying levels of tourists’ decision making. Variety seeking occurs when people switch between options over time (Kahn, Kalwani, & Morrison, 1986) or select different options within a given choice set in the same product category (Ratner & Kahn, 2002). By focusing on the latter, this study found variety seeking can help define a new attendee segment which can be shared with collaborating local agricultural festivals. They work together to provide a given choice set of more options of festivals that some of their attendees can explore. Product category marketing (Tuu & Olsen, 2013) recognizes that the increased accessibility of options in the shared category is important for consumers to opt out to choose similar options within the same category over dissimilar options in other product categories (Woolley & Sharif, 2022). Variety seekers are known to be more responsive to promotional cues and displays than non- variety seekers. When options within a category are more accessible, variety seekers anticipate that future options within that category will be more enjoyable (Woolley & Sharif, 2022). Different from the traditional view identifying the negative role of variety seeking in the tourist loyalty, this study recognizes its positive contribution by adopting the collaborative marketing approach involving multiple local agricultural festivals. The tourism literature has emphasized the need to incorporate collaboration into the management mainly due to the fragmented nature of this sector, but researchers have not considered how local festivals can collaborate to promote those together, particularly for segmentation and targeting. Market segmentation is now widely utilized in the festival study, using a variety of variables, geographical, behavioral, demographic, and psychographic segmentation variables. By adopting the collaborative approach of multiple festivals together in the segmentation and targeting, local agricultural festivals can expand the scope of their loyal attendees. Practical Implications In order to promote the collaborative marketing among local agricultural festivals, this study describes the development of festival attendees’ segmentation embracing multiple neighboring local agricultural festivals together and provides implications to two parties, local agricultural festival agencies and local government. Local agricultural festival agencies primarily target to retain attendees who intend to visit their festival again. They also can work with other local agricultural festivals to cross-retain some of their attendees, other festival goers and Multi Festival Goers who like to visit other festivals. After forming a group of neighboring local agricultural festivals, they can launch a co-promotion program by offering the list of other festivals, placing the promotional materials of other festivals at the festival site, or offering a coupon that can be used at other local festivals. This collaborative marketing program will help attract variety seeking attendees (i.e., other festival goers and Multi festival goers) while retaining their own loyal attendees. It is also important to design festival programs and promotional messages according to the motivation factor of the market segments to which they are targeted, because different segments are motivated by different factors. In order to attract Multi festival goers, each local festival agency needs to use its own local food products that each festival focuses on, their tasting and sampling, and their information should be in the marketing materials. For Other festival goers, novel events, entertainment, weekend getaway contents for festivals and so on should appear in the marketing messages. Alternatively, how to socialize not only with attendees’ companions but also other attendees need to be highlighted for One Festival Goers to attend each local agricultural festival. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ Choo, H. (2024) / Events and Tourism Review, 7(1), 18-33. 29 Events and Tourism Review Vol. 7 No. 1 (2024), 18-33, DOI: 10.18060/28150 Copyright © 2024 Hyungsuk Choo This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. The local government is to adopt the collaborative marketing approach for its local festivals in the region, thus helping coordinate networking, enjoy its synergy effect, and effectively share their best resources among its local festivals. The local government is one of the key stakeholders for the success of local festivals, which is important for the region and its community as well as festivals themselves. More and more local governments utilize festivals strategically to bring long- term economic and social benefits to the region and its community but competition among local festivals has also been intensified. Therefore, the local government needs to help their local festivals in their region to be self-sustaining and become institutionalized rather than being run on an ad-hoc basis (Getz & Andersson, 2008) For this, the local government needs to not only support individual local festivals but also develop an approach to help all of those mutually benefiting each other. The latter requires to segment festival attendees to share and cross-target some of those would be the first step. Limitations of This Study The findings of this study are specific to local agricultural festivals in South Korea and may not be applicable to other types of festivals. Future research should replicate this study across various festival types—such as cultural, art, and music festivals - and different geographical locations. Moreover, expanding upon this work could involve considering additional variables. For instance, motivation and involvement, as suggested by previous festival scholars (Chang, S. & Gibson, 2015; Shi, Ji, Weaver, & Huang, 2022), could help explain varying levels of satisfaction and loyalty among different groups attending local festivals. Furthermore, it is important to recognize that the predictors identified in this study's framework may vary across cultures. Therefore, cross-cultural studies are needed to better understand these differences within specific regions and countries. References Akhoondnejad, A. (2016). 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(2024) / Events and Tourism Review, 7(1), 18-33. 33 Events and Tourism Review Vol. 7 No. 1 (2024), 18-33, DOI: 10.18060/28150 Copyright © 2024 Hyungsuk Choo This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. Appendix. Measurement of concepts Variety seeking I generally like to try out something different or new. I attend different local agricultural food festivals to try something different. I like diversity. I like new, different types of local agricultural food festival. Always attending the same festival is boring. Festival Loyalty I intend to visit the current festival again. I’ll recommend this festival to my friends/families. I’ll say positive things about the festival Satisfaction I am satisfied with my decision to visit the festival. My overall feeling about the festival was positive. I am satisfied with the programs/operations of the festival. Motivation-Novelty/Escape Because I enjoy special events. For the festival atmosphere. I can enjoy a festival crowd. I can enjoy a day out. To enjoy the entertainment. For a change of pace from everyday life. Festivals are unique. To get away on the weekend. To try something new. Motivation - Local Product To experience local agricultural products. For local agriculture food tasting. To get familiar with local agricultural food. To increase food knowledge. To buy food. Motivation - Socialization To visit a place I can talk about when I get home. To help bring the family together. To spend time with the family. I can meet people with similar interests. I can exchange ideas with food providers. Motivation - Learning To learn local food products To explore culture To seek education and education To meet experts https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/