Do Bloggers Influence Their Reader’s Motivations to Attend Events?

Abstract

Blogging has become one of the key parts of online culture and they are an important source of information sharing (Trowbridge et al 2016). Bloggers are being found to influence their readers in many different ways but a gap in the literature was found in relation to a bloggers’ influence on the attendance of events. Therefore, the main purpose of this research was to find out whether blogger influence their readers motivations to attend events. A quantitative research method was adopted for this research and this took the form of an online survey. This research method was used as it allowed for a wider sample to be collected and that research method had worked well in previous research. A total of 63 respondents participated in the survey. The results of the research found that the 18-24-year-old age group are active users of social media, with them using social media for more than 3 hours per day. Also, people do actively engage with blogs and bloggers and people are influenced what bloggers say and that they influence their buying decisions. The main finding of this research was that bloggers are effective in the promotion of events, but it was found that they do not influence their readers motivations to attend events. It was also found that the main motivation to attend events for was entertainment purposes which argues what the literature states. The study concludes that by making recommendations for the events industry as well as recommendations for further research.