Segmenting and Profiling Visitors to the Ulaanbaatar Naadam Festival by Motivation

The analysis of visitor motivation for attending festivals, as a basis for segmentation, is an important prerequisite for targeting markets, planning festival programmes and product positioning. This study identified five motivation dimensions for visitors attending the 2005 Naadam cultural festival in Mongolia, using factor analysis. A cluster analysis on the five factors produced five stable motivation segments: multipurpose seekers; indifferent; culture and sport seekers; togetherness, socialisation and sports seekers; and socialisation and local event seekers. Significant associations between motivation clusters and visitor age and type were identified, although there was no significant interaction between the clusters and visitor type with respect to overall satisfaction. The results are generally consistent with the outcomes of previous research on festival and event motivation in Europe and North America, suggesting universality of core themes. However, unique combinations of motivation dimensions suggests that further research is required to develop understanding of variable interaction.