Defining Event Marketing as Engagement-Driven Marketing Communication

Abstract

Event marketing has been one of the popular corporate marketing strategies for decades. The method is experiential and aims to transform not only attendees' perceptions but also their behavior. Despite this, several events have failed to build loyalty or the purchase intention beyond the entertainment value. In addition, event marketing now focuses on gaining purchase and visit intentions. When a company focuses on engagement, it causes an increased usage desire and longer customer lifetime value. However, as a consequence of such communications, research into the engagement effect of an event has been lacking. This study clarifies the literature review to better understand it. This study reviews 40 relevant scholarly publications from the Scopus database to build a novel concept of engagement-driven event marketing. This article narrows the search using event marketing characteristics. Previous research has found six event types: sports, festivals, concerts, special events, trade shows, and meetings. Five factors influence the attendees: purchase intention, visit intentions, word-of-mouth, brand loyalty, and brand equity . This paper presents a new event marketing model based on Nufer (2015) and Żyminkowska (2019). Attendee engagement is defined by the relationship among the event’s content, the event’s involvement, the event-brand image congruency, and the attendee’s experience of the event’s content. There are also suggested theoretical and managerial considerations.