GROUNDED THEORY AND EMOTIONAL ENGAGEMENT: WHAT DO WE LEARN FROM THE FIELD? Cav. Alessandro Sorbello - Griffith University, Australia Dr. Eliane Karsaklian – LARGEPA – Sorbonne, France Abstract Festivals’ ability to trigger emotional engagement and its consequent impact on consumption habits in real and delayed time has not been studied so far. The purpose of this research was to study the inputs and outputs of emotional engagement as perceived by professionals in the Italian Week Festival in Australia. The design was grounded on real-life experiences via a qualitative study based on 32 semi-structured interviews with professional experts involved in the production and execution of the festival. This generated key dimensions of emotional engagement. Results indicate that Italian Week does generate emotional engagement which in turn changes consumption habits during the Festival and at the same time, enhances its the residual effect. A better understanding of the underlying key components of emotional engagement can represent a competitive advantage to Festival producers. We contribute with a conceptual framework for emotional engagement and implications for both academics and practitioners.

1. The Case of Italian Week in Australia

2. Video

3. The Illumination Italian Week 2016

4. The Illumination Italian Week 2016

5. The Illumination Italian Week 2016

6. The Illumination Italian Week 2016

7. The Illumination Italian Week 2016

8. The Illumination Italian Week 2016

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12. The Illumination Italian Week 2016

13. Methodology
• The study presented here is part of a longitudinal research over a 10 year
period.
• It is designed to analyse the effects of emotional engagement created by
Italian Week.
• The results presented here are based on data collected from the field in the
last two editions of Italian Week.
• A pilot script was pre-tested with two interviewees and after minor
adjustments the definitive script was applied to 32 informants during the
Festival who were asked to describe emotions stimulated by the event.
• Interviewees were asked to freely talk about emotions emerging during the
Festival. All interviews were recorded and integral transcripts were analysed
via manual content analysis and coded by each author separately before
having them put together to ensure that no misinterpretations occurred.
Minor discrepancies were noticed between the two analyses.

14. Theoretical Foundations
• Festivals reinforce cultural and social identity within a community (Gursoy et al., 2006)
• Provide a key to a community’s shared histories (Grappi and Montanari, 2011).
• Festivals meet the emotional needs of stakeholders and attendees as opposed to simply
generating profits (Ryan, 2006)
• Models to measure Festivals’ success in financial terms exist (Rao, 2001)
• Emotional stimulation and motivation affect consumer patterns and behaviour (Lee et al.,
2011).
• Emotional value is critical to understanding the consumer experience and in enhancing the
overall customer satisfaction (Holbrook, 1994).
Our research
Effects of emotional engagement are largely excluded from evaluations conducted so far as
the strong sentimental and emotional pride linked to Festivals is currently not taken into
consideration.
We propose that measuring the ability of a Festival in creating emotional engagement and
its consequent residual impact on consumption behaviour is critical to a better
understanding of the powerful marketing tool that are cultural Festivals.

15. Methodology
GROUNDED THEORY
• The need of flowing information from data to abstraction in accordance with Critical Realism which
assumes that phenomena exist independent of individuals
(Kempster and Parry, 2011).
• Previous research has analysed the gap between academics and practitioners approach to
Consumer-Brand Engagement (CBE), claiming that the current marketing literature failed in
providing a clear and unitary definition of the concept
(Gambetti et al.,2013).
Our Research
Emotional engagement, may it be to a brand, to a product or to an event, deserves to be analysed
from its deepest roots, that is, from on-field marketing activities which create emotional
engagement and have not been thoroughly studied by academics.
Qualitative and exploratory approach to the topic with the goal of introducing a conceptual
framework originated from marketing practice.

16. Findings

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25. Findings

26. Implications
Our research provides a relevant contribution to
the marketing field in explaining the power of
Emotional Engagement generated by Festivals in
influencing consumer behavior.
It discloses and explains the underlying
components of Emotional Engagement which can
be analyzed separately both by researchers and
practitioners.

27. Thank you for your attention
Cav. Alessandro Sorbello
alessandro@newrealm.com.au
alessandrosorbello@gmail.com
Dr. Eliane Karsaklian
elianekarsaklian@ubi-orbi.com
eliane.karsaklian@sorbonne-nouvelle.fr