Cultural events communication and the influence of sponsoring brands on participants’ purchase intention. Insights from an exploratory study.

The paper explores how participants of cultural events broadcast on TV perceive their communication strategy and whether the communication of sponsoring brands influences their purchase intentions. Qualitative exploratory research was conducted through an online survey with a sample of spectators attending the Sanremo festival, the most popular song festival in Italy. The analysis reveals a quite high use of social media and a general low influence of communication of sponsoring brands on purchase intention that were sponsors of the famous Italian cultural event. The study suggests that cultural events such as music festival should manage strategically their relationship with brands to increase brand awareness, sale, and loyalty. The originality of the study lies in the analysis of how spectators interact with cultural events broadcast on TV in the digital era perceive its communication strategy and how communication of sponsoring brands influences their purchasing intentions, which has received limited empirical investigation. It reveals numerous novel elements within marketing literature, as well as managerial implications. The study presents limits related to the sample of Italians and the specific event in one country therefore it has limited generalizability. Larger sample and different groups of participants (e.g by age, behaviour, etc.) and longitudinal studies could help to understand the phenomenon more in depth.