Exploring the Driving Factors of Urban Music Festival Tourism and Service Development Strategies Using the Modified SIA-NRM Approach
Round 1
Reviewer 1 Report
Dear editor
This article has no problems by me.
Author Response
Thank you very much for the detailed and profound reading of the manuscript as well as for your time and willingness to improve the quality and clarity of the paper.
Reviewer 2 Report
Enjoyed reading the draft.
Appreciate the way the Musical Festivals as Events are discretized in parameters, followed by parametric analysis. Yet the conclusion includes suggestions in concrete terms for the Country.
The indicator "accommodation" can get mentioned in the Conclusion again.based on Table 25.
Author Response
Thank you very much for the detailed and profound reading of the manuscript as well as for your time and willingness to improve the quality and clarity of the paper. The authors have already modified the Conclusion Section on pages 25~26.
- 5. Conclusions and recommendations
In recent years, Taiwan's music festivals have become very popular. Frequently, however, the music festival events also can increase tourism revenue and extend visitors' stays. The performance content of music festivals is becoming more and more diverse, and these urban music festival tourism have also become part of leisure life. The study identifies four aspects (Events Image, Events Experience, Facilities Planning, Service Price) and 16 evaluation criteria for urban music festival tourism by the literature review and expert interviews. This study provides the SIA-NRM approach, integrating the SIA (satisfaction importance analysis) approach and NRM (network relation map) approach. The event organizers of the music festival can analyze the Satisfaction Dimension (SD) and Importance Dimension (ID) status through the SIA approach. EE (Events Experience) locate in the first quadrant (H, H) in the SIA analysis. In contrast, the FP (Facilities Planning) aspect is located in the second quadrant (L, H). EI (Events Image) locate in the third quadrant (L, L), and the SP (Service Price) locate in the fourth quadrant (H, L). In NRM analysis, the SP aspect is the dominant aspect, while EI aspect is the being dominated aspect of urban music festival tourism. Acceptation strategy A can apply in the EE aspect. Acceptation strategy B can apply in the FP aspect and Acceptation Strategy C can apply in the EI aspect. The Acceptation Strategy D can apply to the SP aspect. Although this study solves the status of satisfaction and importance through the SIA approach and determines the network relation structure through the NRM (network relation map) approach, this study doesn't evaluate the difference in the status of satisfaction and importance between different stakeholders. So, this study can assess the differences between various stakeholders of festival events in the future. Recommendations for the event organizers of the music festival include:
(1) The aspects of EE (Events Experience) and SP (Service Price) were satisfaction levels more than average satisfaction level, and the aspects of FP (Facilities Planning) and EE (Events Experience) were importance levels more than average importance level. Besides, the festival event organizers should strengthen and keep the EE (Events Experience) aspect through the SP (Service Price) aspect and the EE (Events Experience) aspect. The festival event organizers should expand the music exhibitions' service facilities through the ticket charging mechanism, which can distinguish the customers who are willing to pay and provide them with better music festival performances. At the same time, music festival planners should continue to improve the service quality. They have also expanded the activity working capital through the music festival's charging mechanism. The music festival activities can provide better on-site service facilities and attract more excellent indie bands to perform for urban music festival tourism.
(2) The aspects of FP (Facilities Planning) and EI (Events Image) were satisfaction levels less than average satisfaction level, and the aspects of FP (Facilities Planning) and EE (Events Experience) were importance levels more than average importance level. So, music festival organizers should pay attention to the FP (Facilities Planning) aspect, improve hardware equipment, such as sound stages, and meet the event participants' service needs. The music festival organizers should also join efforts in transportation, accommodations, and local tours and package tours of urban music festival tourism to attract diverse event participants.
(3) Although the EI (Events Image) aspect is located in the low satisfaction level and low importance level. So, the EI (Events Image) aspect should improve through the aspects of SP (Service Price), FP (Facilities Planning), and EE (Events Experience). Therefore, music festival organizers can conduct strategic alliances with travel service providers and transportation providers to increase the convenience and reduce event participants' searching time. Besides, the music festival organizers can also propose package tours of music festival tourism and sell exclusive urban music festival tourism packages to satisfy event participants' needs. The music festival events providers should continuously improve the quality of urban music festival tourism.
(4) The music festival organizer can use the four suitable development paths [SP (Service Price)→EI (Events Image); SP→EE (Events Experience)→EI; SP→FP (Facilities Planning)→EI; SP →FP →EE →EI] to enhance the service performance of music festival events. Music festival organizers should practice vertical integration through cross-industry and establish network partnerships via horizontal industry integration to provide visitors and event participants with convenience and choices. Music festival organizers also provide local tours and destination tourism and cooperate with hotels to promote the package tours, attracting tourists' willingness to spend more time and money. On the other hand, improving the convenience of the exhibition venue (parking, toilets, and emergency stations) is also a critical improvement goal.
(5) The music festival organizer can integrate the national exhibition electronic ticketing system, ticket service platform, online media channels, etc., to provide consumers with multiple music festival tickets and consulting services. The music festival organizers can also establish integrated marketing and promotion through social network services and internet multimedia, design official Facebook fan pages, and share various event information to create unforgettable experiences.
Reviewer 3 Report
The overall impression is that the topic is interesting, but the author somehow failed to present their contributions to the theory in the right way. Please, find bellow my suggestions how to improve the paper:
Introduction and literature review
Introduction should not review previous studies in detail, but focus on the popularity of the topic over time, the most important studies and the literature gap that the study indents to cover. In a current form, the authors did not explain well what is the contribution and relevance of their study. Besides practical contribution, theoretical contribution should be also presented.
The Literature review is rather chaotic. The authors start the chapter writing about Edinburgh Festival, and the readers may get confused. The author should rather concentrate on the finding of the studies than on the description of the study setting and long descriptions. The similar can be applied to other chapters. Moreover, when writing about event image, there are much more papers that are not analyzed and mentioned. Newer references should be added and literature should be analyzed critically. In this form, this is just stating the references without connection with the current study and without critical analysis.
Results and research design
The authors wrote the whole paragraph reporting The Cronbach's Alpha, while its values we can see in the table. Table content should not be repeated. The authors should mention just that all values of The Cronbach's Alpha are above recommended 0.7.
Participants of the study, as well as the procedure including how they were approached and when should be described in detail. Moreover, Instrument design should be described in more detail.
Discussion
In my opinion there are too many results that are not discussed in a proper way. Discussion should start with analyzing the research questions that the authors failed to define in the Introduction part. Discussion should start from the very first results of the matrix. Currently, the comments are only about the influences between variables. Additionally, discussion is not related to the previous studies and the existing literature.
Conclusion should shed some light on the future research and limitations of the study. Theoretical contribution of the paper should be emphasized.
Generally, it seems that there should be much more work put in this paper. The weakest parts are discussion and literature review.
Author Response
Q1 The overall impression is that the topic is interesting, but the author somehow failed to present their contributions to the theory in the right way. Please, find below my suggestions on how to improve the paper:
Thank you very much for the detailed and profound reading of the manuscript, as well as for your time and willingness to improve the quality and clarity of the paper.
Q2
Introduction and literature review
The introduction should not review previous studies in detail but focus on the popularity of the topic over time, the most important studies, and the literature gap that the study indents to cover. In the current form, the authors did not explain well the contribution and relevance of their research. Besides practical contribution, the theoretical contribution should be also presented.
Thank you very much for the detailed and profound reading of the manuscript as well as for your time and willingness to improve the quality and clarity of the paper. The authors have increased the theoretical and practical contribution in the Introduction Section on pages 1~2 and the latest research in the Literature Review on pages 3~6.
Event tourism is already a critical issue in regional development. Hence, the study updates the previous research and presents an extensive review of research through a more in-depth analysis of the field's evolution and the development of event tourism. The study also charts the growth of the literature, both chronologically and thematically. The research proposes an evaluation framework for understanding and creating knowledge of event tourism and establishes the research concepts, themes, and plans for future directions in event tourism. The review research focuses on emerging topics and issues from academic and trade journals and proposes a roadmap for future research in event tourism (Getz & Page, 2016). One study of tourist loyalty analyzed the loyalty formation process for horse racing events, and the researcher examined the relationship between tourist emotion, tourist satisfaction, event quality, event value, and tourist loyalty. This study adopted the SEM (structural equation modeling) technique and surveyed 330 domestic tourists who attended the Turkmen Sahra Region's horse races in Iran. The research concluded that event quality could influence tourist emotions and loyalty, and tourists' emotions also affect event value and satisfaction.
Additionally, tourist satisfaction and tourist loyalty can influence event value, influencing tourist loyalty (Akhoondnejad, 2018). The film festivals organized can promote the tourism of culture or festival. However, few empirical studies explore the relationship between tourism demands and cultural attendance. So the study collects 80 countries' secondary data to analyze the tourism effects which film festivals organized based on the dynamic panel data analysis. The research result points out the economic value of hosted film festivals and finds the more significant positive effect of organized film festivals in art countries (Kendall, Chan, Yeung, & Law, 2021). Intangible Cultural Heritage (ICH) has been a valuable tourism resource for local governments and communities. However, recent ICH researches still lack a clear definition and are fragmented. One study tried to explore the future directions and trends of ICH tourism through the Web of Science (WOS) database. The authors have conducted a systematic literature review to analyze 418 ICH tourism studies and extracted 85 keywords based on the three WOS databases (Social Sciences Citation Index, Arts and Humanities Citation Index, and Conference Proceedings Citation Index). The study has analyzed the three major issues (tourist behavior and destination marketing, tourism development impact, and resource planning and sustainability) from the 418 ICH tourism studies in 76 countries published between 2000 and 2021. This study discovered that culinary tourism, ecotourism, religious tourism, and festival tourism are more prevalent in ICH tourism. The study proposed suggestions for the development directions of ICH tourism and highlighted the theoretical and practice construction (Qiu, Zuo, & Zhang, 2022). The four aspects (events image, events experience, facilities planning, and service price) evaluated the visitors’ participation preference. Besides, the study presented the SIA (Satisfaction Importance Analysis) approach to assess satisfaction and importance status. The NRM (Network Relation Map) approach was used to analyze the influence relation structure for the urban music festival tourism. The study integrated the SIA and NRM techniques to present the SIA-NRM method. The SIA-NRM approach can assist the organizers in determining acceptance strategies and suitable development paths for urban music festival tourism.
Q3: The Literature review is rather chaotic. The authors start the chapter by writing about Edinburgh Festival, and the readers may get confused. The author should rather concentrate on the finding of the studies than on the description of the study setting and long descriptions. A similar can be applied to other chapters. Moreover, many more papers are not analyzed and mentioned when writing about event images. Newer references should be added, and literature should be analyzed critically. This form just states the references without connection with the current study and without critical analysis.
Thank you very much for the detailed and profound reading of the manuscript as well as for your time and willingness to improve the quality and clarity of the paper. The authors have included the latest research and modified the Literature Review section on pages 3~6.
2.1 Events image (EI)
Innovation is a critical source of competitive advantage. The concept of innovation is explained in detail in several early studies; however, the process of organized innovation has largely been neglected in the tourism field. So, researchers propose an innovative implementation for Chinese modern music festivals based on the relational perspective. The six detailed case studies were explored in the research and discussed how identity, equality, guanxi (a meaningful relationship and social network system that facilitate business dealings), and contextual factors influence the association development of new Chinese music festivals. The study proposes a conceptual model to explain these relationships' complexities and evaluate their roles in innovation implementation. Moreover, the study also incorporates some mediating factors (temporality, reliance, and organizational structure on volunteers within events) (Li, Wood, & Thomas, 2017).
The phenomenon of aging popular music has garnered attention in the past. Previously, rock, punk, and similar genres mainly attracted young people and were collectively called “youth music.” The new concept of youth culture has proposed through cultural aging perspectives. The research offers two ways to recast rock and punk music and attract aging fans of music events to continue their event involvement. The first path can remodel cultural spaces to accommodate aging bodies, and these cultural spaces continue to offer rock and punk music for differently-aged fans in a multigenerational experience. The second path can attract these aging fans to experience live music in diverse spaces, such as show events and winery concerts or dinners (Bennett, 2018). Festival tourism can create social, economic, cultural, and political benefits and increase the local communities' recognition. Therefore, the festival organizers' hosting the long-running community festival has become a critical problem for community stakeholders. The study explores relationships among support intention, social capital, and place identity for tourism of festival events based on the model of cognition-affect-behavior. Researchers try to find the critical success factors of festival events for local community residents through the Kaohsiung Zuoying Wannian Folklore Festival. Besides, the study adopts the SEM (structural equation modeling) approach to analyze the relationship between support intention, social capital, and place identity through the 500 residents' sample data. The research result points out that social trust influences place identity, also influenced by social networks and social norms. Besides, the study finds that the place identity plays an essential role in the support intention.
The tourism industry's recovery has become a critical challenge under the COVID-19 pandemic. Safety and sustainability are the two most important missions of the tourism industry. Researchers have explored the relationship between behavioral intentions, festival attitudes, perceptual evaluations, perceived risks, crowding, and pandemic fears in the COVID-19 pandemic period. One study has adopted a face-to-face survey to evaluate the participants in the Guangzhou Hanfu festival during the COVID-19 pandemic period. The research result pointed out that fear affects festival behavioral intentions during the COVID-19 pandemic and confirmed the perceived risk's mediation and moderation role of crowding. The research result also shows that place identity has a mediated effect on social capital on support intention (Nien-Te, Cheng, Chang, & Hu, 2021). The study also proposed valuable recommendations for local governments and festival service providers (Yang, Luo, & Yao, 2022).
Q4: Results and research design
The authors wrote the whole paragraph reporting The Cranach’s Alpha, while its values we can see in the table. Table content should not be repeated. The authors should mention just that all values of The Cranach’s Alpha are above recommended 0.7.
thank you very much for the detailed and profound reading of the manuscript as well as for your time and willingness to improve the quality and clarity of the paper. The authors have modified the subsection of the Research Design and Reliability Analysis on page 8.
The Cronbach's Alpha (Cronbach) indicator was adopted to evaluate the satisfaction reliability and importance reliability for each aspect/criterion. The satisfaction dimension's Cronbach's Alpha was 0.965, which is higher than the suggested level of 0.7 (Cronbach> 0.7); the importance dimension's Cronbach's Alpha was 0.946, which was also higher than the proposed level of 0.7 (Cronbach> 0.7). Thus, the satisfaction dimension and importance dimension reliability were highly consistent. Further, Cronbach's Alpha of the evaluation aspect was 0.952, higher than the suggested 0.7 (Cronbach> 0.7). Therefore, the aspect reliability of the service system was highly consistent. The EI (Events Image) aspect of the Cronbach's Alpha was 0.940, and the Cronbach's Alpha of the aspect of EE (Events Experience) was 0.967. The FP (Facilities Planning) aspect of the Cronbach's Alpha was 0.957, and the Cronbach's Alpha of the SP (Service Price) aspect was 0.956. Hence, the aspects of EI, EE, FP, and SP reliability were all highly consistent, as shown in Table 2.
Q5: Participants of the study, as well as the procedure including how they were approached and when should be described in detail. Moreover, Instrument design should be described in more detail.
Thank you very much for the detailed and profound reading of the manuscript as well as for your time and willingness to improve the quality and clarity of the paper. The authors have modified the subsection of the Research Design and Reliability Analysis on page 8.
3.1 The research design and reliability analysis
Researchers determine the four aspects (events image, events experience, facilities planning, and service price) and 16 criteria through the field expert interview and literature review. For example, the aspect of event image can generalize based on the interview results of the music festival organizer. Likewise, event experience can be generalized through the interview results of the invited indie bands and event participants; the aspect of facilities planning can be generalized by the overall stakeholders' views. The service price aspect can obtain through the experts' interviews. This study also surveys the satisfaction level and importance level of each aspect/criterion for the stakeholders (event organizers, invited indie bands, event vendors, and event participants) and finishes with a 30-item questionnaire. The researcher collects the sample through the online questionnaire and paper questionnaire. The study received 220 total samples and 172 valid samples, and the 172 valid samples, including those from 2 internal stakeholders (event organizers) and 170 external stakeholders (event participants, invited indie bands, and event vendors).
This study adopts the modified SIA-NRM (Satisfaction & Importance Analysis- Network Relation Map) approach to improve the evaluation system of urban festival tourism. There are six steps. The first step defines the critical decision problem for urban festival tourism systems. The second step determines the driving forces (aspects/criteria) of the evaluation system through expert interviews and literature reviews. The third step surveys each aspect/criterion's satisfaction and importance level and adopts the SIA approach to evaluate the satisfaction and importance statuses. The fourth step establishes the Network Relation Structure through the NRM approach and determines the main dominant aspects/criteria in the evaluation system. The fifth step of the SIA-NRM approach combines the SIA approach and the NRM approach to provide acceptation strategy and recommends suitable improvement paths for festival tourism systems. Finally, the modified SIA-NRM approach provides the acceptance path and suitable development paths through the aspects/criteria rank for satisfaction and importance status. This study adopts Microsoft Office Excel to establish the SIA approach and uses Matlab to calculus the NRM approach. The modified SIA-NRM approach includes six analytic processes which are illustrated in Figure 1.
Q6: Discussion
In my opinion, there are too many results that are not discussed in a proper way. Discussion should start with analyzing the research questions that the authors failed to define in the Introduction part. Discussion should start from the very first results of the matrix. Currently, the comments are only about the influences between variables. Additionally, a discussion is not related to the previous studies and the existing literature.
Thank you very much for the detailed and profound reading of the manuscript as well as for your time and willingness to improve the quality and clarity of the paper. The authors have modified the Discussion subsection on pages 22~24.
4.2 Discussion
The "Edinburgh Festival" gives a new dimension to the city through event creativity. The Edinburgh Festival attracts audiences through its performing arts and modifies the tourists' traditional image of Scotland. Three aspects of the present image are International performing arts, Scottish performing arts, and Edinburgh as a tourism-historic city. The image of Scotland has successfully been modified into a "landscape and tradition" destination for tourists by its core value of international arts positioning. The research showed that the destination itself does not determine its destination position and that familiarity will not change the destination's image (Prentice & Andersen, 2003). This study extends Prentice & Andersen's research (2003) and defines some critical criteria which influence the destination's image. Besides, this study also finds the network relation structure and determines its development paths for the EI (Events Image) aspect.
In the EI (events image) aspect, there are two suited development paths (EI2→EI4→EI1; EI2→EI4→EI3→EI1), as illustrated in Table 25. The first suited development path is that the EI2 criterion influences the EI4 criterion, and the EI4 criterion affects the EI1 criterion. So, music festival organizers should offer some package services for event participants, and some package services should integrate various services and increase the convenience for event participants. The music festival organizers should also offer some peripheral products to satisfy the fans of indie bands and invite different styles of indie bands. Music festival organizers should also provide more choices to attract diverse event participants and let these new indie bands have more opportunities to cultivate their audiences and fans.
The second suited development path is the EI2 criterion influencing the EI4 criterion, and the EI3 criterion influencing the EI1 criterion. Thus, music festival organizers can offer some music festival package services for event participants. These music festival package services should integrate various services and let event participants save time by ordering different services during the music festival period. Besides, the music festival organizers also offer peripheral products to satisfy fans' collection needs for their preferred indie bands. Moreover, some promotion activities (combination of accommodation services and transportation services) can attract event participants, and diverse package service selection (accommodation service, transportation services, package tour service) also satisfies their different service needs. Also, the music festival organizers should invite famous indie bands and new indie bands to join the urban music festival tourism. The new indie bands can create different experiences for the event participants.
The service experience addresses how to influence the tourists’ intent to revisit a medieval festival. Robinson & Clifford (2012) analyzed the visitors’ food service experience at the medieval festival to understand the relationship of the foodservice experience with tourists’ intent to revisit the event. The study adopted the dualistic authenticity framework to evaluate the tourist/visitor experience with tourism, events, and hospitality. The study also established a scale to measure foodservice authenticity dimensions for an Australian medieval festival. The research found significant differences between overall visitor-perceived event authenticity, food service, and event service scope and hygiene factors. Besides, the study also found a relationship between re-visitation intentions and perceived authenticity (Robinson & Clifford, 2012). This study explores the service experience of music festival events and defines the critical aspect/criteria for the EE (Events Experience) aspect. In addition, this study also determines the influence relation map and recommends four suitable development paths for the festival event experience.
The four suited development paths (EE2→EE4; EE2→EE1→EE4; EE2→EE3→EE4; EE2→EE3→EE1→EE4) were applied for the EE (events experience) aspect as illustrated in Table 25. The first suited development path is the criterion of EE2, influencing the EE4 criterion. Therefore, music festival organizers can plan the stage characteristics based on local tourist resources, such as a beach, unused spaces, and public spaces. Then these characteristics can allow event participants to have a different field experience. The second suited development path is the EE2 criterion, which influences the EE1 criterion, and the EE1 criterion affects the EE4 criterion. Music festival organizers can also promote the characteristics stages and event information via the official website and fan page. These historical event photos can inspire event participants' beautiful event memories. The third suited development path is that the EE2 criterion influences the EE3 criterion, and the EE3 criterion influences the EE4 criterion. Music festival organizers can also propose new event themes for the music festival and plan the diverse characteristics of stages and different styles of indie bands for event participants. The new event themes and various characteristics steps can create unique event experiences for participants. The fourth suited development path is the EE2 criterion influencing the EE3 criterion, and the EE3 influences the EE1 criterion, with the criterion of EE1 influencing the EE4 criterion. The music festival organizers can offer diverse service information (event schedules, indie band lists, venue information, traffic information, etc.) via the internet service platform. Music festival organizers also provide historical event records (historical event themes, historical event photos, and indie band lists) to evoke beautiful event memories. And allow participants to relive old times by joining the new urban music festival tourism.
Tourist Shopping Villages (TSVs) integrate visitor-oriented services and retail in visiting, urban settings, and destination tourism, often near historical/natural attractions. Getz (1993) analyzed the development strategies of TSVs for three near-urban cases through a literature review and case studies and proposed that key entrepreneurs play diverse roles in the type of tourism product. One study also offered three alternative TSV planning and development (Getz, 1993). This study explores the service facilities and facilities planning of music festival events and defines the critical aspect/criteria for the FP (Facilities Planning) aspect. Moreover, this study also determines the influence relation structure and recommends four suitable development paths for planning festival facilities.
There are four suited development paths (FP4→FP3; FP4→FP2→FP3; FP4→ FP1→FP3; FP4→FP2→FP1→FP3) for the FP (facilities planning) aspect, as illustrated in Table 25. The FP4 criterion influencing the FP3 criterion is the first suited development path. Music festival organizers can offer more accommodation service information and package tours that combine the event ticket and accommodation services. Besides, some accommodation service providers (hotel, bed, and breakfast (B&B), and homestay) often offer breakfast and catering services for their customers. So these event experiences can enjoy their breakfast and catering services in the hotel and do not spend time finding catering services by searching the event vendors. The second suited development path is the FP4 criterion affects the FP2 criterion, and the FP2 criterion improves the FP3 criterion. The music festival organizers can integrate these accommodation service providers to offer ancillary facilities (parking lots, traffic connection stations, etc.) that can satisfy event participants' different visitors' needs and reduce the inconvenience of local transportation. Ancillary facilities (such as medical stations) can reduce unexpected situations and accidents for event participants. However, music festival organizers can offer complete guiding signs and vendor planning to increase the event participants' convenience in the music festival period.
The third suited development path is the FP4 criterion influences the FP1 criterion, and the criterion of FP1 affects the FP3 criterion. The music festival organizers can integrate accommodation services to offer convenient transportation and various catering services for event participants and provide comprehensive exhibition planning to allow event participants to find preferred indie bands by clear stage planning. The music festival organizers also offer full vendor planning to satisfy event participants' different needs and ensure the vendors can provide legal and safe products and services. The vendors can offer reasonable prices for their products and services at the music festival. The fourth suited development path is the FP4 criterion influencing the FP2 criterion, and the FP1 criterion affects the FP3 criterion. Accordingly, the music festival organizers can offer diverse accommodation service information for event participants and integrate the service provider of accommodation services to provide ancillary facilities (traffic connection stations, parking lots, catering services, etc.). And improve the lack of local transportation and integrate local medical resources to reduce the impact of unexpected situations and accidents. The music festival organizers also should offer comprehensive exhibition planning to aid event participants in finding their preferred indie bands by precise stage planning and complete guiding signs. The music festival organizers can also invest in diverse vendors to satisfy the event participants' different needs and make sure the vendors can offer legal and safe products and services and provide reasonable and affordable prices for their products and services.
Special events and local festivals can bring benefits to the culture, community, economy, and society. The massive customers' data on tourist shopping, service experience, destination choices, and accommodations are available during the festival event periods. Festival event organizers should take advantage of such data to gain an understanding of the tourists' behavior during the period of the festival. Besides, festival event organizers should also extract these critical data to increase customer satisfaction and revenues. One study adopted the business intelligence framework to establish and analyze the massive customer data of the festival event and translate the vast customers' data into business insights. It assisted the festival event organizers obtain critical business and operation insights from such data. That study also proposed its business intelligence framework through Thailand's local festival events and demonstrated their practical validity (Vajirakachorn & Chongwatpol, 2017). This study explores the service pricing of music festival events and defines the critical aspect/criteria for the SP (Service Price) aspect. Moreover, this study also determines the network relation structure and recommends suitable development paths for the service price of festival events.
One suited development path (SP2→ SP1→SP4→SP3) is present for the SP (service price) aspect. The fourth suited development path is the SP2 criterion influencing the SP1 criterion and the SP4 criterion affecting the SP3 criterion. When event participants get closer to the music festival, the accommodation service prices become higher and higher, and the event participants will not find it easy to order different services for the music festival event. Therefore, music festival organizers can integrate the accommodation service providers (hotel, bed, breakfast, and homestay) and service providers of convenient transportation services to propose package tours for the music festival. The package tours of the music festival combine the event ticket, accommodation services, catering services, and transportation services. Music festival organizers can offer various event ticket packages; some event tickets can sell separately, and other event tickets can integrate with the package tours. Music festival organizers can guarantee the sales status of music festival event tickets by the pre-order service system. The event participants can gain their integrated services by ordering the package tour of ticket packages, as illustrated in Table 25.
Q7: Conclusion should shed some light on the future research and limitations of the study. The theoretical contribution of the paper should be emphasized. Generally, it seems that there should be much more work put into this paper. The weakest parts are the discussion and literature review.
Thank you very much for the detailed and profound guidance of the manuscript as well as for your time and willingness to improve the quality and clarity of the paper. The authors have modified the section on Conclusions and Recommendations on pages 22~25.
- 5. Conclusions and recommendations
In recent years, Taiwan's music festivals have become more and more popular. Frequently, however, the music festival events also can increase tourism revenue and extend visitors' stays. The performance content of music festivals is becoming more and more diverse, and these urban music festival tourism has also become part of leisure life. The study identifies four aspects (events image, events experience, facilities planning, and service price) and 16 evaluation criteria for urban music festival tourism through the literature review and expert interviews. This study provides the SIA-NRM approach, integrating the SIA (satisfaction importance analysis) approach and NRM (network relation map) approach. The event organizers of the music festival can analyze the satisfaction dimension (SD) and importance dimension (ID) status through the SIA approach. EE (events experience) locate in the first quadrant (H, H) in the SIA analysis. In contrast, the FP (facilities planning) aspect is located in the second quadrant (L, H). EI (events image) locate in the third quadrant (L, L), and the SP (service price) locate in the fourth quadrant (H, L). In NRM analysis, SP aspect is the dominant aspect, while EI aspect is the being dominated aspect of urban music festival tourism. Acceptation strategy A (Status keeping) can apply in the EE aspect. Acceptation strategy B (Immediate improvement) can use in the FP aspect and acceptation strategy C (Progressive improvement) can apply in the EI aspect. The acceptation strategy D (Status monitoring) can use in the SP aspect. Recommendations for the event organizers of the music festival are included in the following:
(1) The aspects of EE (Events Experience) and SP (Service Price) are satisfaction levels more than average satisfaction levels, and the aspects of FP (Facilities Planning) and EE (Events Experience) are importance levels more than average importance level. Besides, the festival event organizers should strengthen and keep the EE (Events Experience) aspect through the SP (Service Price) aspect and the EE (Events Experience) aspect. The festival event organizers should expand the music exhibitions' service facilities through the ticket charging mechanism which can identify the group of customers who are willing to pay in order to provide them with better music festival performances. At the same time, music festival planners should continue to improve the service quality of music festivals. The activity working capital can be increased via the music festival's charging mechanism. The music festival activities can provide better on-site service facilities and attract nicer indie music bands to perform for their urban music festival tourism.
(2) The aspects of FP (Facilities Planning) and EI (Events Image) were satisfaction levels less than average satisfaction level, and the aspects of FP (Facilities Planning). EE (Events Experience) were importance levels more than the average importance level. Music festival organizers should pay attention to the FP (Facilities Planning) aspect, improve hardware equipment, such as sound stages, and meet the event participants' service expectations. The event organizers of the music festival should also join efforts with providers of transportation, accommodations, and local tours and package tours to meet diverse event participants’ needs.
(3) The study result shows that EI (Events Image) aspect is located in the low satisfaction level and low importance level. Therefore, the EI (Events Image) aspect should improve through the aspects of SP (Service Price), FP (Facilities Planning), and EE (Events Experience). Therefore, music festival organizers can conduct cross-industry integration marketing strategies through strategic alliances with travel service providers and the transportation industry. The music festival organizer should also provide various integrated services for music festivals, such as transportation and accommodation arrangements, to increase the convenience and reduce event participants' searching time. Besides, the music festival organizers can also propose package tours of music festival tourism and sell exclusive urban music festival tourism packages to satisfy event participants' service needs.
(4) The music festival organizer can use the four suited development paths [SP (Service Price)→EI (Events Image); SP→EE (Events Experience)→EI; SP→FP (Facilities Planning)→EI; SP →FP →EE →EI] to enhance the service quality of music festival events. The music festival event providers should continuously improve the quality of the urban music festival tourism and continue operating urban music festival tourism. Music festival organizers should practice vertical integration through cross-industry and establish network partnerships via horizontal industrial integration to provide visitors and event participants with convenience and multiple choices. Music festival organizers gradually plan the local tours and destination tourism and cooperate with hotels to promote the package tours, attracting tourists to spend more time and money during the event. On the other hand, improving the convenience of the exhibition venue (parking, toilets, and emergency stations) is also a critical improvement goal.
(5) The music festival organizer can integrate the national exhibition electronic ticketing system, ticket service platform, online media channels, etc., to provide consumers with multiple ticketing and consulting services. The event organizers of a music festival can also establish integrated marketing and promotion through social network services and internet multimedia, design official fan pages on Facebook, and share abundant event information to create unforgettable event memories.
Reviewer 4 Report
- The study is very important regarding the effect of music festival, part of cultural tourism.
- The topics studied in the paper are clearly described in different part of paper and is very complex.
- The Cronbach's Alpha indicator and The Network Relation Map used is adequate for this study.
- The article is well written, the tables, figures are very clearly, nice design.
- I recommend to dedicate a section only for the research methodology and is necessary to indicate the software used.
- Please add the source for tables and figures (Source: X… or own research)
- Row 271 (This The study adopts) -please review
Author Response
Q1. The study is critical regarding the effect of music festivals, part of cultural tourism. The article is well written, the tables and figures are very clear and nice design. The topics studied in the paper are clearly described in a different part of the paper and are very complex. The Cronbach's Alpha indicator and The Network Relation Map are adequate for this study.
Thank you very much for the detailed and profound reading of the manuscript as well as for your time and willingness to improve the quality and clarity of the paper.
Q2. The conclusion should shed some light on the future research and limitations of the study. The theoretical contribution of the paper should be emphasized. Generally, it seems that there should be much more work put in this paper. The weakest parts are the discussion and literature review.
Thank you very much for the detailed and profound reading of the manuscript as well as for your time and willingness to improve the quality and clarity of the paper. Section 3 of the modified SIA-NRM approach has been modified, and explanations of the software used are shown on pages 7~8.
3.The modified SIA-NRM approach
This study adopts the modified SIA-NRM (Satisfaction & Importance Analysis- Network Relation Map) approach to assess the urban festival tourism evaluation system. There are six steps. The first step defines the critical decision problem for urban festival tourism systems. The second step determines the evaluation system's driving forces (aspects/criteria) through expert interviews and literature reviews. The third step surveys each aspect/criterion's satisfaction and importance level and adopts the SIA approach to evaluate the satisfaction and importance statuses. The fourth step establishes the Network Relation Structure through the NRM approach and determines the evaluation system's main dominant aspects/criteria. The fifth step of the SIA-NRM approach combines the SIA approach and the NRM approach to provide acceptation strategy and recommends suitable improvement paths for festival tourism systems. Finally, the modified SIA-NRM approach provides the acceptance path and suitable development paths through the aspects/criteria ranking for satisfaction and importance status. This study adopts Microsoft Office Excel to establish the SIA approach and uses Matlab to calculus the NRM approach. The modified SIA-NRM approach, including six analytic processes, is illustrated in Figure 1.
Note: Own research
Figure 1. The modified SIA-NRM approach for urban music festival tourism.
Round 2
Reviewer 3 Report
I would like to thank the authors for the effort they have put to improve the paper according to the suggestions. The improvement is noticeable, so I suggest the paper to be published.
Author Response
Q1: I would like to thank the authors for the effort they have put to improve the paper according to the suggestions. The improvement is noticeable, so I suggest the paper be published.
Responses1:
Thank you very much for the detailed and profound reading of the manuscript as well as for your time and willingness to improve the quality and clarity of the paper.
This manuscript is a resubmission of an earlier submission. The following is a list of the peer review reports and author responses from that submission.
