Factors That Affect The Levels Of Local Tourists’ Loyalty Towards A Hallmark Event

In recent years, FSE (the abbreviation of festival and special events) are rising all overthe country because of its great contribution to regional economy, society and culture.Meanwhile, the overseas and domestic research on this area has made considerableheadway. About the research content of FSE, they can be divided into two categories: oneis general research on FSE, the other is specific study on large-scale FSE such as OlympicGames and World Cup. And the results of FSE research mainly contained events’influenceand events’ management and planning. However, the hallmark events got little attentionfrom the overseas and domestic researcher, and the study on local tourists’ perceivedvalues, satisfaction and loyalty is the same, though they are the main supporters ofhallmark events. Therefore, the article takes the local tourists participating the hallmarkevents as study object, with the purpose of finding the factors that affect their loyaltytowards hallmark events.Based on the satisfaction theory and relationship marketing theory, and according tothe previous research achievements, the author combined the research perspectives oftransaction process and relational process to construct the hypothesis model of the localtourists’ loyalty towards hallmark events. Then taking the ninth Guangzhou folk festivaland the “Polo Kotan” millennium temple fair as study case, the author tested and correctedthe hypothesis model, and finally on the basis of research results, made some managementimplications on how to foster the local tourists’loyalty towards hallmark events.This study reveled that:(1) In terms of hallmark events, the local tourists’ wholeperceived value is influenced by four perceived value dimensions, which are emotion value,service value, social value and cognitive value, and among which emotion value’sinfluence is the greatest.(2) What can directly and positively affect local tourists’satisfaction are the whole perceived value, emotion value, recreation value and functionvalue, among which the whole perceived value has the biggest impact.(3) Both the localtourists’ commitment towards the organizer and their whole perceived value can havesignificant effect on their loyalty, and the former’s effect is larger than the latter. But thesatisfaction doesn’t directly influence the loyalty, it is through the commitment indirectly affecting the loyalty.(4) The attitudinal loyalty of local tourists is bigger than the behaviorloyalty, which can be inferred from the three items’ marks. The survey showed the item“I’ll recommend this festival to others” got greater marks than the item “I’ll take part inthis folk festival again” and the item “I’ll propagandize and praise this folk festival toothers”.On the basis of above results, the paper proposed some management suggestions onfostering the local tourists’ loyalty towards hallmark events:(1) meeting the FSE tourists’needs;(2) supplying advanced infrastructures;(3) improving the abilities of governmenthosting the hallmark events;(4) Doing a good job in relationship marketing.