| dc.description.abstract | Food festivals appeal to a broad range of potential attendees. However, for food festival attendees to engage in
such a food adventure to arouse high levels of satisfaction in an environment different from their home, their true
authentic self may need to be restrained. The present, study, thus uses Stimulus-Organism-Response (SOR)
paradigm to examine the relationship among existential authenticity, experiential value, satisfaction, customer
delight, and loyalty within the food festival context. Using a questionnaire survey, 598 festival attendees of a
food event were sampled conveniently. The results show that while experiential value and existential authenticity
are important environmental stimuli within the food festival setting, not all emotional states are influenced
by existential authenticity. Existential authenticity is negatively related to satisfaction suggesting that the more
attendees are true to themselves regarding different food cultures, the lesser they are to be satisfied. Moreover,
festival attendees’ loyalty is affected by both satisfaction and customer delight. Implications for marketing food
festivals to meet the preferences of prospective attendees are discussed. | vi |
