ATTENDING LIVE PERFORMING ARTS EXPERIENCES. WHY AND HOW IS THE DECISION TAKEN?

Across the last years, researchers around the world have shown a greater inclination towards the arts marketing, acknowledging its importance for the well being of arts organizations. Researches have been conducted for all kind of subjects trying to understand better both phenomena: the audience and the provider. However, these studies have their own particularities as they refer to certain cultures. Therefore, we need to look into our own yard and see whether or not such interests have been raised. Unfortunately, researches conducted in this area, in Romania, are very few. That is why the knowledge regarding the live performing arts audience is actually non-existent and from this fact comes the need of discovering more about this unknown. This paper attempts to make one of the first steps in this direction by exploring the audienceâ€(tm)s motivations to attend live performing arts events and, moreover, the buying decision process. Why do audiences choose to attend live performing arts events? How they decide for it? Which are the sources of information they use? What makes a live performing arts event be a pleasant experience? Or rather an unpleasant one? These are all questions to which this paper provides answers. The way the author have chosen to answer these matters is by conducting a qualitative research that has the aim to explore the universe of this subject and to denote insights for a better understanding. The best method was considered to be the focus group for its advantage of bringing together people who have something in common -namely their frequency in live performing arts events, and facilitate communication between them in order to discover the needed information. Thus, it has been discovered that audiencesâ€(tm) motivations are mainly related to social and esteem needs, that is to say people attend these kind of events from their desire to spend their time in a pleasant manner with the people they like or because attending is „trendy†and makes one look more like a cultivated person. However, their motivations are second by the sources of information they use, namely personal sources (e.g. family or friends) because they seem to be more trustful than others, as well as experential sources, meaning consumerâ€(tm)s own experience that makes him a true expert in choosing. Whatever they have chosen, the live performing arts event may or may not raise their expectations. The reasons for this stand both in the performance itself and the audiencesâ€(tm) behavior. In conclusion, this paper aims to encourage the further discovery of the performing arts sector from the marketing perspective.