A Critical Investigation into the Most Effective Ways to Market a Modern Day Music Event: A Young Consumer’s Perspective

Abstract

The global music events industry has grown massively over the last twenty years and shows no sign of stopping. The title of this research is ‘A Critical Investigation into the Most Effective Ways to Market a Modern Day Music Event: A Young Consumer’s Perspective’. This research aims to highlight the challenges when marketing modern day music events as each is so diverse and requires a unique set of marketing communication tools, as well as looking at the idea of ‘traditional’ and ‘non-traditional’ methods and discovering the level of influence consumers have when it comes to marketing. To begin, a literature review was carried out, investigating the existing research in the key areas this study; mainly the background of the events/music events industry, market awareness, consumer behaviour and power and the theory of ‘traditional’ versus ‘non-traditional’ marketing. Next, it was decided that qualitative research would be used to research this particular topic because this study is based on the consumer’s perspective when it comes to marketing so it was important to hear their real life experiences and opinions. The researcher conducted six semi-structured interviews, with people aged from 18-35 who had attended a wide range of different music events. The researcher then analysed the data collected from the interviews (some surprising and some expected) through the use of digital audio recordings and underlined the key themes in relation to the main aims and objectives of the project. The key findings made up four main themes: importance of knowing your market, consumer preference, the power of consumers and traditional vs. non-traditional/digital marketing. In order to answer the objectives of the research project and establish suitable conclusions and recommendations, each theme was analysed closely.