The fun in anticipation

Abstract

The Dutch dance festival market competition is ‘killing’, the
market is starting to saturate. Only 20% of the festivals manage to sell out
and 5% of the festivals are canceled because they failed to attract a
sufficient amount of visitors. Organizations compete on prize with early bird
tickets, sold early in the pre-sale period. The only way for organizations to
succeed is to stay connected to their target group.

Usually the period of ticket sales
is around 20 weeks. At ID&T, ticket sales for their festival concepts show
different slopes. For some festivals tickets are sold linear while for other
festivals the majority of the tickets are sold in the final weeks of ticket
sales. It is important to know in an early stage how many visitors to expects
due to budgeting and preparations.

In order to motivate visitors to buy tickets earlier and to
differentiate from other festival organizations, the anticipation phase was
analyzed and used to come up with a product. Anticipation describes the
emotions experienced prior to an event. It involves pleasure, excitement, and
anxiety.

It was found that anticipation occurs when people process
information into imagination or preparation. This generally leads to
expectations regarding the expected event. The expectations may not be too
high, since afterwards the expectations are matched with reality. When
expectations are not met, the experience is rated as insufficient.

Festival advents aims to facilitate anticipation by means of
a festival advent calendar. The visitors are provided with information to
stimulate their anticipation in terms of imagination and preparation. The
festival advent calendar can be obtained during the early stages of ticket
sales by buying a group ticket. The festival advent calendar is used over a
period of 24 days, where after the group participates in a festival quiz. With
the festival quiz, festival goodies can be won which have to be collected on
the festival site.