Event organisers’ perspectives on the importance of marketing management of culinary festivals in the Western Cape

Abstract

Events have formed an important part of the tourism industry globally and over the years the number of culinary events have increased. The combination of tourism and culinary events have seen a growth of culinary tourism world-wide with food and beverage being the focus of interest. With the growth of these events, marketing was said to form an integral part of the organisation of these events. Festival marketing is an increasingly important part of business practice for all types of festivals, including culinary festivals. Given the importance of marketing management, it becomes critical to understand the event organisers’ perspectives on the marketing management of culinary festivals to understand the importance thereof. The aim of the study was therefore to explore event organisers’ perspectives of the importance of event marketing in terms of culinary festivals and furthermore to investigate how the marketing domain of EMBOK is implemented into culinary festivals. The following questions were identified for the purpose for the study to understand how the EMBOK marketing domain is implemented for culinary festivals; determining the impact of festival industry trends, determining the influence of social media and gaining insight on the marketing challenges faced by festival organisers. There have been a few quantitative studies on the perspectives and viewpoints of organisers and other stakeholders, with a lack of qualitative research and therefore this exploratory study followed a qualitative approach which included semi- structured interviews and a content analysis. The key findings identified in the study included four themes which emerged from the interviews as well as four themes emerging in the content analysis highlighting the importance of marketing, as well as the trends and challenges within the culinary industry. The study therefore provided confirmation that marketing in events is important in the culinary industry and therefore continuous emphasis and effort should be placed in this area with recommendations to improve the marketing framework within the culinary industry with the as well as in the recommendations in academia in providing up to date exposure to the technological development within the industry. Further research on the marketing of culinary festivals may also be explored with the inclusion of the recent challenges faced within the industry.