Abstract

Past studies on consumer satisfaction have tended to focus on ‘cognitive’ determinants of satisfaction. In other words, they seek explanation to festival satisfaction on a range of specific (more or less tangible) attributes of the festival. Yet, in experience-based products, such as festivals, this may not be sufficient to fully understand the determinants of satisfaction. Emotions are at the centre of experiences and therefore these should also be incorporated in satisfaction models. This paper sought to examine the determinants of festival satisfaction and to understand the extent to which emotion is a determinant of festival satisfaction. Using the Beach Break Live Festival (UK) as a case study and logistic regression as the analytical technique, the results show that emotions do contribute to explaining festival satisfaction in addition to cognition. Moreover, positive emotions were the single most important determinant of overall satisfaction. Satisfaction with Food & Drink, Staff, Facilities and Information & Organisation were also found to influence participants’ satisfaction. Implications for theory and practice are discussed.