The weight of stakeholders on festival management. The case of music festivals in Italy

              © PASOS. Revista de Turismo y Patrimonio Cultural. ISSN 1695-7121
Vol. 10 Nº 2. Special Issue. Pp. 25-35. 2012
www.pasosonline.org
The weight of stakeholders on festival management. The case of
music festivals in Italy
Angelo Presenza i
Simone Iocca ii
University “G. d’Annunzio” (Italy)
i Assistant Professor in Organization Design, University “G. d’Annunzio”, presenza@unich.it
ii PhD Student in Management & Business Administration, University “G. d’Annunzio”, s.iocca@unich.it.
Abstract: Even if events can represent important drivers for local development, it is possible to have
a genuine economic and social contribution only when the event is undertaken within a paradigm
that emphasizes the importance of complex interactions between the event’s proposer and its stake-holders.
Inside the event sector, festivals represent a specifi c sub-fi eld that share time similarities
and peculiarities as compared to other typologies. This paper analyzes the Italian context of music
festivals and deepens the relationships between the festival organizer and public and private actors
using stakeholder management approach. Findings suggest that Italian festivals have a reasonable
level of entrepreneurship since the analysis reveals a good predisposition for the use of management
practices.
Keywords: Music festival; Event management; Stakeholder theory; Stakeholder strategies; Rela-tionships.
Título: El peso de las partes interesadas en la gestión del festival. El caso de los festivales de música
en Italia
Resumen: A pesar de que los eventos puedan representar una contribución importante al desarrollo
económico y social, esto sólo es posible cuando el evento se realiza bajo un paradigma que haga
hincapié en la importancia de las complejas relaciones entre el proponente del evento y las partes
interesadas. Dentro del sector de los eventos, los festivales representan un sub-campo que comparte
similitudes y particularidades, en contraste con otros tipos de evento. Este trabajo analiza el contexto
italiano de los festivales de música y profundiza en las relaciones entre el organizador del festival y
los actores públicos y privados, utilizando un enfoque de gestión de partes interesadas. Los resultados
sugieren que los festivales italianos tienen un nivel razonable de iniciativa empresarial ya que el aná-lisis
revela una buena predisposición para el use de prácticas de gestión.
Palabras clave: Festival de música; Gestión de eventos; Teoría de partes interasadas; Estrategias de
partes interesadas; Relaciones.
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Introduction
With many shapes and specifi city, several poten-tial
goals to satisfy and a plethora of stakeholders to
involve, festivals are somewhat unique in the events
sector (Getz et al., 2010). There is a growing inter-est
in how the organization of festivals can preserve
and promote anthropological and cultural heritage,
animate specifi c attractions or entire cities, improve
the awareness or image of the destination, provide a
competitive marketing advantage, and increase the
economic benefi ts. Due to all these potentialities,
Richards (2007) has introduced the term “festivali-zation”
in studying why/how festivals have globally
become preferred tools in place marketing and tour-ism
development.
Though festival management reproduces generic
concepts and methods of event management, it has
been recognized as a distinct sub-fi eld (Andersson
and Getz, 2008). Among those who suggest treating
festivals as a specifi c sub-group, Getz et al. (2010)
note that many festivals are focused on traditional
community celebrations (largely organic, even spon-taneous)
or on cultural and special themed celebra-tions.
In 1987 Falassi described the festival as “a
sacred or profane time of celebration, marked by
special observances” for highlighting the impor-tance
of this special event in celebrating community
values, ideologies, identity and continuity. It is easy
to note that inside the category of festivals there is
a long list of sub-categories each of which with one
or more specifi cities. Wilson and Udall (1982: 3) pro-posed
seven broad categories (arts festivals; dance,
jazz and music festival; harvest and food festivals;
shows, fairs and festivals; and sports events), while
Getz (2005: 21) defi ned them as “themed, public cel-ebrations”
so as not to create too stringent bounda-ries
that could lead to the exclusion of some typol-ogy.
Besides, putting a festival in a specifi c category
can become very diffi cult when there is not an at-tribute
that prevails unequivocally on the others (an
example can be a festival that promotes music and
enogastronomic products simultaneously). Most of
the time the explanations essentially apply to all
types of festivals and the object of celebration is of-ten
recognizable in the name (Getz, 2005), such as
the Umbria Jazz Festival (the most important Ital-ian
jazz music festival), which indicates its nature.
Festivals can represent an important driver
in increasing the destination attractiveness (Arco-dia
and Robb, 2000) and this is confi rmed in look-ing
at the international market where events have
become a worldwide tourism phenomenon (Prentice
and Andersen, 2003; Allen et al., 2002; Getz, 2005).
Nevertheless, many planned events are still pro-duced
with little or no thought given to their tour-ism
appeal or potential. The reasons can be sought
in the organizers’ specifi c aims, in the absence of re-lationships
established between events and tourism
(Getz, 2008), and in the small size of the organiza-tion
that can limit the marketing and tourism orien-tation.
Also in this case, festivals, such as any other
typologies of event, can provide important benefi ts
like social and recreational opportunities for resi-dents
(Reid, 2011).
This study adapts a stakeholder perspective on
festival management in a study of music festivals.
Dependencies between the festival organizer and its
stakeholders will be portrayed as well as relational
interaction processes. The purpose is to illustrate
how the festival organizers view their dependence
to their stakeholders and how they manage their
stakeholder relations. The study aims to give some
insight into how festivals can successfully handle
their stakeholders to ensure festival survival.
The study presents empirical evidences for 48
Italian music festivals, investigated through a
structured questionnaire administered directly
with an electronic survey.
Literature review
The Festivals depend on different actors because
they have critical resources. There are some that
become vital partners and can infl uence on how to
develop the festival. Some of them are so important
that it is very diffi cult to replace them in a short or
long-term time perspective. One of the most com-mon
reasons for festival failure is insuffi cient re-sources
(Getz, 2002). Lack of resources can be ex-plained
by a weakness of the festival management
to attract sponsors and donators and/or a high de-gree
of competition for resources in the events sec-tor.
Accordingly, festivals are dependent on support
from stakeholders for their survival. A challenge for
festival organizers is handling their stakeholders in
a way that decreases their dependence in relation to
their stakeholders (and thereby decreases the risk
of lack of resources).
This premise also highlights the importance for
the event sector of stakeholders. The identifi cation
of all stakeholders and a review of their agendas will
assist event managers in balancing the competing
needs, tensions and expectations of all stakeholders
Angelo Presenza and Simone Iocca
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(Getz et al., 2007). It can also provide an excellent
opportunity for improving propensity of local busi-nesses
to networking activities that represents a
crucial, effective and effi cient option in terms of mo-bilizing
resources, information, experience, knowl-edge
and ideas.
An event stakeholder can be defi ned as “… those
persons or groups who can infl uence the organiza-tion,
or are infl uenced by it” (Getz, 2007, p. 92). Getz
(1991, p. 15) applies the earlier general defi nition
of stakeholders to festivals and events as: “… those
people and groups with a stake in the event and its
outcomes, including all groups participating in the
event production, sponsors and grant-givers, com-munity
representatives, and everyone impacted by
the event”.
Organizing a festival is executed by a coalition
of stakeholders involving public, private, and volun-tary
organizations; for example the festival organi-zation,
artists, sponsors, suppliers, public authori-ties,
tourism traders, etc. The efforts of interacting
stakeholders lead to the building of a festival and its
image, which is expected to attract visitors.
Interaction among the actors is characterized
by both competition and collaboration (Gummes-son,
1996). In fact, they compete with each other to
obtain the satisfaction of related interest and they
should work together (collaborate) to reduce the con-fl
ict and to attract visitors to the “festival’s product”.
Therefore, interaction among actors involves
confl icts, such as confl icts over the time of artists’
performances (for example a later time may be more
attractive than an early time) or confl icts over the
best advertising, since a central location is more at-tractive
than a peripheral one. So, actors have dif-ferent,
and sometimes opposing, interests (Wood
and Gray, 1991), goals and strategies.
In order to promote specifi c interests, an indi-vidual
seeks to reinforce its position of power over
other stakeholders involved (Huxham, 1996). Actors
with a strong position can have more infl uence on
the development and commercialization of the fes-tival’s
product, therefore, better opportunities to
satisfy their interests. However, actors complement
each other: they link complementary products and
services to add further commercial value (Cunning-ham
and Culligan, 1990). A festival offering a broad
supply of activities is expected to attract more visi-tors,
also from different market segments.
There are different theoretical approaches in
dealing with an organization’s contextual environ-ment
and this paper will focus on the approach of
Stakeholder Theory. The stakeholder approach re-fers
to groups and individuals who can affect the
organization, and managerial behavior taken in re-sponse
to those groups and individuals (Freeman,
1984).
Stakeholder theory focuses on stakeholders and
their potential for cooperation or threat from a fo-cal
fi rm’s perspective. In this sense, this theory sees
the company as an organization from which many
agents (stakeholders or groups of interest) request
multiple demands that are not always coherent
(Donaldson and Preston, 1995). A group or an in-dividual
is qualifi ed as a stakeholder if it has a le-gitimate
interest in aspects of the organization’s ac-tivities
and, thus, has either the power to affect the
organization’s performance and/or has a stake in its
performance (Sautter and Leisen, 1999).
Savage et al. (1991) propose their perspective to
understand stakeholder’s potential to threaten the
organization. The capacity, opportunity, and will-ingness
to do so is postulated to be function of the
player’s relative power and its relevance to a partic-ular
issue dealt with. Mitchell et al. (1997) combine
the concepts of power with legitimacy and urgency
to create a typology to support the analysis of stake-holder
relevance. They propose that salience (as
perceived by managers) will be positively related to
the number of these three attributes that managers
perceive the stakeholder to possess.
Stakeholders are not all equal, so it is indispen-sable
for the management of an organization to pri-oritize
them and focus their efforts accordingly. This
prioritization requires a basis for analysis. Reid and
Arcodia (2002) proposed a conceptual model show-ing
how events are linked to primary and secondary
stakeholders. “Primary” stakeholders were defi ned
as those on whom the event is dependent (namely,
employees, volunteers, sponsors, suppliers, specta-tors,
attendees, and participants), while “secondary”
stakeholders include the host community, govern-ment,
essential services, media, tourist organiza-tions,
and businesses. Another classifi cation is pro-vided
by Getz et al. (2007) who group stakeholders
into “facilitator” (provides resources and support),
“regulator” (usually government agencies), “co-pro-ducer”
(other organizations and persons who partic-ipate
in the event), “allies and collaborators” (such
as professional associations and tourism agencies),
and those impacted (mainly the audience and the
community).
Festival and event stakeholder groups may be
considered in relation to the power and infl uence
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that they are perceived to have within a festival or
event organization. This can be defi ned in relation
to their roles and the success of festivals and events.
Stakeholders may be considered additionally in re-lation
to their impact upon the achievement of a fes-tival’s
aims. Therefore, the identifi cation and clas-sifi
cation of festival stakeholders is essential to the
strategic positioning of festivals (Getz, 2005, 2007;
Getz et al., 2007). Moreover it is evident that: “…
stakeholder analysis and management can be used
to build more effective event brands” (Merrilees et
al., 2005: 1060).
Once all stakeholders have been identifi ed, it
becomes fundamental to individuate the presence
of relationships and relative frequency of relation-ships.
The management and continued success of
festivals is dependent therefore on those stake-holders
who are most involved with the festival or-ganization
(Reid and Arcodia, 2002). The analysis
of similarities and/or differentiation helps to indi-viduate
groups of stakeholders in order to organize
appropriate strategies. The Savage et al. (1991)’s
typology provides a balanced view of the possible
infl uences – co-operation and threat – and explicitly
attempts to place stakeholders in a management
context by suggesting appropriate strategies for
each type. Those authors prescribe specifi c manage-ment
strategies based on a typology that relates a
stakeholder’s potential to threaten the organization
to their potential to cooperate with it. They advo-cate
a “collaborative strategy” where the potential
for both cooperation and threat is high. A “defensive
strategy” is suggested when the potential for threat
is high and the potential for cooperation is low. An
“involvement strategy” is prescribed for situations
of low potential for threat but high potential for co-operation.
Still a “monitoring strategy” is called for
when both the potential for threat and cooperation
are low.
It is important to emphasize that the presence of
a good stakeholder management approach can also
support festivals in responding to possible problems
or threats that can arise in the festival organiza-tion.
Andersson and Getz (2008: 215), for example,
in analyzing a sample of live-music festivals in
Sweden, provided a list of hypothetical threats and
asked respondents to indicate if those had been seri-ous
problems. Their research reveals that the most
serious problem is “bad weather”, followed by “the
high cost of entertainment or performers” and “over-reliance
on one source of money”.
Research methodology
The fi rst step of the research has been to indi-viduate
the population of Italian music festivals.
The activities have not been quick because a nation-al
organization that represents them doesn’t exist.
Then a complete census of all self-titled “festivals”
in Italy was undertaken through several methods
such as search of commercial sites specialized on
music, tourism regional websites such as those ad-ministrated
by DMOs, and a Google search with a
set of predetermined key-words. Because most of
them are small, community-based, spread around
all the Country, and are constantly changing as new
ones enter while others fail or change in fundamen-tal
ways, there is no possible generalizability to the
whole population of festivals in Italy. Despite this, a
list of 194 festivals has been created.
An email was sent to festivals present in the list
inviting them to complete a questionnaire in a web-based
survey solution. Allowing for an eight week
survey period (October – December, 2010) which in-cluded
a pre-test on three festivals through a face-to-
face interview, a total of 55 questionnaires were
returned. After the fi rst month, a reminder call was
made to available phone numbers. There were 48
useable questionnaires (a 25.26% response rate). In
our opinion, the fi nal sample size is quite acceptable
because it covered a diverse range of Italian music
festivals in terms of geographical location, music
genre, form, size, funding and number of editions.
The questionnaire is divided into three main
sections. The fi rst part asked for general informa-tion,
such as ownership and control, musical genre
prevailing, programme, number of editions, total
audience, venues used, staff, revenues and costs.
The second part is related to the strategies used in
running the event in the previous three years and
what degree of success was ascribed to each on a
5-point Likert scale (where 1 = completely ineffec-tive
and 5 = fully effective, or 0 if it did not use the
specifi c strategy). Respondents were also asked
to answer statements concerning challenges and
threats to their festival. The third part set out a list
of the different organizations (public and private).
The list was originated and adapted starting from
the one provided by Getz et al. (2010). The Inter-viewee
was asked to indicate for each stakeholder
the presence of relationships (yes/no), the frequency
(daily/weekly/monthly), and the quality (1 = poor to
5 = excellent). We decided to use also weighted re-sponses
to improve the accuracy of answers (ratio
Angelo Presenza and Simone Iocca
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can vary from 0 = low use to 4 = high use). In doing
so, further information about relationships between
festivals and their stakeholders was gathered ask-ing
about the tools used to communicate (e-mail
numbers, fax number traded, number phone calls,
mails, meeting organized).
Results and discussion
The sample analyzed consists of festivals of dif-ferent
territories (some are itinerant, that are re-peated
in the same way, but in different places),
from the north to the south of Italy, and taking place
at different times during the year.
In relation to the prevailing music style, in the
festivals analyzed, 20.84% are focused on Jazz while
16.67% on classic and 16.67% on folk, 14.58% on
rock, 8.33% on pop, 2.08% on blues, and 20.83% on
other types of music. The observation of the festivals’
names reveals that in 22.92% of cases there is the
word “music” while 47,92% of the festivals include
the music genre in their names. 66.67% are organ-ized
by cultural associations, 6.25% by foundations,
12.50% by private companies, and 14.58% by public
bodies such as municipalities. Table 1 contains the
longevity and highlights that show how nearly 50%
refers to a festival with a number of editions below
10. There is a mean of 46.835 spectators while the
number of the people involved in the organization is
on average 36.
The number of artists participating in the festi-val
varies depending on the type of event and the
proposed musical genre: from a few individuals (in
the case of jazz, blues or pop festival) to hundreds
of artists (for example, in the case of folk or classic
festival).
Looking at the total revenue (fi gure 2), it emerg-es
that the fi rst source is sponsorships followed by
public grants. Tickets represent 16% while mer-chandising
only 1%. In addition, festivals choose
sponsorships in 84.62% of cases, followed by munici-pal
and regional grants (71.79% and 58.97%), and
tickets (53.85%).
Instead, the analysis of expenditure highlights
that the ranking is the cachet of the artists (42.85%),
organizational expenses (37.10%), marketing ex-penses
(14.56%), and other (5.49%).
Figure 1 shows that festivals with more editions
are characterized by higher values compared with
festivals with less editions and it highlights how
the gap between revenue and expenditure is very
considerable for the youngest festivals while it is al-most
absent for the other categories.
The stakeholders of a festival were grouped in
this way:
- media (television and radio stations, newspapers
and magazines);
- music and artists (national and international, mu-sic/
arts performers/bands and their booking agen-cy);
- public authorities (local authority, government
agencies that give grants, police and other public
services);
- sponsors (big and small companies that use the fes-tival
as a marketing tool);
- suppliers of facilities, food and beverages;
- visitors (trough trading intermediaries);
- tourism traders (hotel, other accommodation, res-taurant,
associations and clubs);
- independent organizations (that work to organize
and promote the festival).
A fi rst analysis shows that festivals perceive a
greater dependence on stakeholders that provide
funds (public bodies and sponsors) while assigning
less weight to logistics and facilities.
Number of
editions No % Mean spectators Mean people involved
Less than 5 9 18,75% 28.080 20
From 5 to 10 16 33,33% 6.447 24
From 11 to 15 7 14,58% 33.714 41
From 16 to 20 5 10,42% 4.320 29
More than 20 11 22,92% 154.739 71
Table 1. Number of Festival’s Editions
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All festivals affi rm to have good relationships
with stakeholders (in fact, in a range from 1 = poor
to 5 = very good, the average is 4). A deeper analysis
of the frequency (daily, weekly, and monthly) and
the communication tools (presence of relationships
- weighted) demonstrates how relations are not so
intensive (table 2).
In fact, reports that focus on the months before
the festival usually have a monthly or weekly fre-quency.
Instead, relations are more frequent (daily)
in the weeks before the event, such as trading with
intermediaries, the media and artists.
Considering the number of festival’s editions,
interesting refl ections emerge on the quantity of
relationships that the organization has with its
stakeholders (table 3). For the determination of the
quantity of reports (low level, medium level or high
level), the reference was the number of e-mail, fax-es,
phone calls, letters and meetings.
Generally, with most of the stakeholders, the
intensity level or relationships is medium. In par-ticular,
the festivals that have a number of editions
over 20 are those with a high level of intensity (in
particular with media, artists, sponsors, govern-ment
agency, local authority, tourism traders and
trading intermediaries). This can best be explained
if the ability of the organizers and the network of
relationships that they have built over the years are
Figure 1. Revenue and Expenditure
Figure 2. Sources of Revenue and Expenditure
Angelo Presenza and Simone Iocca
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Stakeholder
Presence
of relation-ships
Frequency Presence
of rela-tionships
(weighted)
From 0 to 4
Daily Weekly Monthly Quality
Media 94.74% 17.14% 37.14% 45.72% 1.39 3.68
Other artists (not internation-al)
94.74% 5.71% 45.71% 48.58% 1.32 4.21
Local authority 92.11% 10.81% 40.54% 48.65% 1.54 3.83
International artists 84.21% 15.62% 37.50% 46.88% 1.11 4.32
Facilities 81.58% 3.33% 33.33% 63.34% 0.97 4.13
Artist booking agency 78.95% 9.68% 54.84% 35.48% 1.12 3.81
Our major corporate sponsors 76.32% 3.45% 17.24% 79.31% 1.00 3.79
Our small corporate sponsors 73.68% 0.00% 14.29% 85.71% 0.89 3.74
Government agencies that
give us grants 65.79% 7.41% 14.81% 77.78% 0.93 3.56
Tourism traders 57.89% 9.52% 28.57% 61.91% 0.74 3.71
Food and beverage providers 55.26% 0.00% 36.84% 63.16% 0.62 4.11
Trading intermediaries 52.63% 25.00% 50.00% 25.00% 0.49 3.95
Police and other public ser-vices
52.63% 0.00% 9.52% 90.48% 0.48 3.95
Independent organizations 42.11% 6.25% 37.50% 56.25% 0.65 3.93
Table 2. Stakeholders and Relationships
No. of festival’s editions
Stakeholder less
than 5
from 5
to 10
from 11
to 15
from 16
to 20
more
than 20
Facilities M M M M M
Food and beverages M M M M M
Media M M M M H
Other artists (not international) M M M M H
International artists M M M M H
Artist booking agency M M M M H
Our major corporate sponsors M M M M H
Government agencies that give
us grants M M M M H
Local authority H M H M H
Independent organizations M M L M M
Our small corporate sponsors M M L M H
Tourism traders M L M M H
Trading intermediaries L L L M H
Police and other public services L L L M M
Note: L = Low; M = Medium; H = High.
Table 3. Quantity of Relationships
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considered. Observation of the table 3 shows how
the festivals with a number of less than 16 editions
have a low level of intensity of their relationships in
particular with trading intermediaries, police and
other public services, independent organizations,
small corporate sponsors and tourism traders.
Stakeholder strategies were examined and re-sults
are highlighted in table 4. It was asked which
strategies had been employed over the past three
years, and the perceived degree of success on a
scale of fi ve (with 1 = completely ineffective; 5 (=
completely effective; 0 when strategy is not used).
Looking at the column “use of the strategy”, the
most frequently practiced strategies were “worked
on creating an identity / image” and “worked on the
promotion of brand” with a good perceived degree of
success (mean = 4). These are followed by “worked
on the promotion of brand” (degree of success of 4),
“developed initiatives in support of the local com-munity”
(degree of success of 4). While less common
strategies include: “supported the collaboration be-tween
the sponsors for their mutual benefi t” with
a suffi cient perceived degree of success (mean = 3),
“got money loan to cover fi nancial losses” (degree of
success of 3) and “paid a company to search for new
funding sources or sponsors” (degree of success of 2).
The observation of the data shows that the main
focus of the festival organizers is to work on the
brand and the image of the event, involving the
community. While low attention concerns the eco-nomic
aspects of the organization and management
of the event.
Table 5 lists several issues and reveals that al-most
all are considered strengths. Particularly, the
highest rated strengths were “artistic proposal”,
“period of performance”, “location”, and “staff”,
while “ability to manage cash-fl ow” and “costs” were
indicated as weaknesses. Probably, these points of
weakness also explain why some festivals are no
longer replicated over the years. In fact, the lack
of economic resources is the main cause of survival
of an event: often, the costs of organization are not
properly covered by revenue. The results highlight
how among all stakeholders, musicians are the one
that receive the higher attention from festival or-ganization,
followed by staff.
Use of the
strategy (%)
If yes, the de-gree
of success
No Yes Mean S.D.
Worked on creating an identity / image 2% 98% 4,36 0,78
Worked on the promotion of brand 12% 88% 4,03 1,01
Developed initiatives in support of the local community 20% 80% 4,00 1,14
Invested in the creativity to invent new products within the festival 20% 80% 3,03 1,36
Converted a supplier in a sponsor (to reduce costs) 30% 70% 2,86 1,33
Worked as a lobby for funding or other benefi ts 35% 65% 2,58 1,03
Contacted the media to become offi cial sponsors 37% 63% 3,32 1,49
Developed and formalized marketing partnerships with other or-ganizations
42% 58% 3,17 1,50
Tangible resources shared with other festivals 47% 53% 2,71 1,35
Taken legal action to register the brand 57% 43% 3,82 1,38
Provided fund to cover the unexpected (i.e. Insurance rain) 60% 40% 2,81 1,47
Imitated other festivals / events to keep up with market trends 60% 40% 2,50 1,03
Other organizations authorized to use the name and logo of the
festival
67% 33% 2,00 1,22
Supported the collaboration between the sponsors for their mutual
benefi t
67% 33% 3,00 1,63
Got money to loan to cover fi nancial losses 70% 30% 3,08 1,44
Paid a company to search for new funding sources or sponsors 77% 23% 2,44 1,51
Table 4. Stakeholder Strategies Employed and Perceived Degree of Success
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Conclusions
The survey has revealed how festivals are varie-gated
and spread around all Italian regions. There-fore
it was possible to fi nd around 200 festivals
focused on music and it may be that others exist.
It is diffi cult to survey them because among many
reasons, the most evident are that a national as-sociation
does not exist, few of them work all year
round, and many are not present on the web. Con-sidering
that in addition to music festivals, there
are also many others who valorise other arts, it is
evident that the phenomenon is even more impor-tant.
Moreover, it is signifi cant to emphasize that
most of them are strongly connected with the local
environment. Maybe, the main reasons of this re-lation
are related to the specifi c anthropologic fea-tures
of Italy. In fact, there are several examples
where a festival principally represents a driver to
support the aggregation and the identity of the lo-cal
community. To sustain this thesis, there is the
fact that many festivals are organized by cultural
associations while the fi rms are in the minority. In
this way, the festival becomes a tool for sustainable
development of the area because it preserves and
promotes the culture and society through the direct
participation of local residents. Moreover, it can
also contribute to the harmonious development of
the local economy. In fact, the observed data shows
how widespread the approach is to the music festi-val
to promote other activities, most notably typi-cal
food. In our opinion, in Italy the time is ripe to
consider festivals as tools in place marketing and
tourism development. A fundamental role for the
success of the event is played by the organizer. The
results show the existence of different types of or-ganizations
whose structure become more complex
the greater the number of festival editions. It is also
evident that if the number of editions increases, also
the overall complexity increases, as clearly evident
in the case of revenue, expenditure and number of
people involved.
The respondents claim to know and use manage-ment
practices. This statement leads us to believe
that the level of entrepreneurship is good despite
the organizational structure not being too articu-late.
In confi rmation we report some fi ndings. Many
festivals use a strategic approach, and brand strate-gies
play a key role. They recognize the importance
of stakeholders in organizing the festival and in
general they are also aware of their infl uence. In
fact, they claim to have a network of relationships.
Despite this statement, the results of the research
show that the weight and frequency of the relation-ships
are not so obvious.
The analysis of sources of funding shows that
festivals are highly dependent on public and private
funding. Furthermore, among the few weaknesses
that they say to have, there is the low capability to
manage cash fl ow and costs. Those factors highlight
how important it is to deepen the knowledge about
Issues Strength (%) Weakness (%)
Artistic proposal 95% 5%
Period of performance 95% 5%
Location 88% 12%
Staff 85% 15%
Ability to manage debt 76% 24%
Planning and organization 68% 32%
Reputation 66% 34%
Human Resource management 66% 34%
Event marketing 65% 35%
Relations with the resident population 58% 42%
Resource management (i.e. Equipment, venue) 57% 43%
Involvement of local actors 53% 47%
Ability to manage cash-fl ow 34% 66%
Ability to manage costs 32% 68%
Table 5. Strength and Weakness of the Music Festival
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The weight of stakeholders on festival management ...
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the organization of the event in terms of human
resource management, competencies and skills re-quired,
and the management tools. Those evidences
suggest further researches in this context such as
the creation of a general framework useful for re-searchers
to monitor, to evaluate and to compare
strategies of the events.
This frame will be also functional to the exigen-cies
of festival’s managers who may dispose of a
strategic performance management tool for keeping
track of the execution of activities.
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Recibido: 15/02/2011
Reenviado: 30/09/2011
Aceptado: 31/10/2011
Sometido a evaluación por pares anónimos