Branded Marketing Events: A Proposed “Experiential Needs-Based” Conceptual Framework

Abstract

Marketers and event organizers have long viewed sponsorship as a way to fund events and garner public attention for brands. Recent years has seen brands employ event techniques in their own right, with specific intent of more directly influencing the consumer's attitude toward the brand. We propose a conceptual framework for how those events affect consumers across the range of “typical” consumers that attend events. This is done through proposing a typology of experiential involvement that demonstrates the likely impact an event will have on a consumer; events are categorized as educational or entertainment. Combining the typology with event types we propose a hierarchy of effectiveness for researchers and practitioners to consider and further research.