Tourism and Events

Building upon the perspectives of sport value co-creation and symbolic action, this study employs a hermeneutic analysis of the socio-cultural dynamics shaping value in events. It examines the symbolic co-construction of a participatory small-scale event and the attached meanings that instantiate perceptions of value. We investigate a free-diving event held in the Greek island of Amorgos commemorating the 1988 film ‘Big Blue’. Fieldwork was conducted during the event, including focus groups, semi-structured interviews, and observation. Findings demonstrate the event’s dramaturgic hypostasis acting both as symbolic social space and multi-stakeholder value co-creation platform. Three overarching themes epitomize the actors’ experience: connecting, communing and belonging. This reveals a dramaturgical world-making stage in which co-creative instantiators embody meanings that coordinate interaction, communicate information, integrate resources, and evaluate value. Our study calls for comprehensive dramatological inquiries embracing the collective embodiment of events as social dramas that enable collaboration through the instantiation of shared meanings.

Building upon the perspectives of sport value co-creation and symbolic action, this study employs a hermeneutic analysis of the socio-cultural dynamics shaping value in events. It examines the symbolic co-construction of a participatory small-scale event and the attached meanings that instantiate perceptions of value. The authors investigate a free-diving event held on the Greek island of Amorgos commemorating the 1988 film “Big Blue.” Fieldwork was conducted during the event, including focus groups, semi-structured interviews, and observation. Findings demonstrate the event’s dramaturgic hypostasis acting both as symbolic social space and multi-stakeholder value co-creation platform. Three overarching themes epitomize the actors’ experience: connecting, communing, and belonging. This reveals a dramaturgical world-making stage in which co-creative instantiators embody meanings that coordinate interaction, communicate information, integrate resources, and evaluate value. This study c...

This chapter focuses on a major UK outdoor music festival and uses concepts and theories from Operations Management (OM), Purchasing & Supply Management (PS&M) and Supply Chain Management (SCM) literature to develop an understanding of the impact of events through decisions between suppliers from their different purchasing practices and methods.  It follows the flow of communications and activities from (end) customer engagement from the focus organisation towards the supply base.

A case study method is used by engaging in the form of multiple semi-structured interviews with directors and employees at UK-based music events and festival suppliers.  This data was supported by document collection and analysis.  A conceptual framework was developed from the different purchasing practices taken from a mixture of the literature types detailed above and analysis using NVivo SW to explore the links between those practices selected/deployed and the type of customer engagement.

The research shows and categorises the number of different purchasing practices that are used in the industry in a meaningful manner.  Secondly, as there are a diverse number of purchasing practices used by organisations and although establishing causality is not the purpose of this research, there are nonetheless influences from customer requirements and engagement on the selection of purchasing practices.

An application of concepts and theories taken from different literature areas in the Events Management field, which further develops our understanding of the dynamic nature of this industry.  It may also have implications for practitioners by increasing their awareness of the different purchasing practices that can be used in certain situations.