Segmenting Visitors to a Culinary Event: Motivations, Travel Behavior, and Expenditures

Abstract

In this study culinary event attendees were segmented on the basis of push motivations. Using a factor-cluster approach with data collected from an international culinary event, the study segmented culinary attendees into two meaningful groups. The results of the analyses can be summarized as: 1) food event, event novelty, and socialization were the push motivations identified for attending a culinary event, 2) motivations were clustered into two segments: food focusers and event seekers, 3) the two clusters were statistically different from each other based on gender, age, income, education, and expenditures. This research makes a contribution to the area of consumer behavior research in culinary tourism from both the theoretical and empirical perspectives. It is believed that results of the present study will be useful to organizers of culinary events and/or destination managers.