Branding Cultural Festival as a Destination Attraction : A Case Study of Calabar Carnival Festival

The study attempts to develop a normative model for the branding of cultural festivals. This is because present methods of analyses and the rules are inconsistent and elusive. The study seeks therefore to extend the literature on cultural festivals branding by proposing a normative model of branding process that is linked to the service concept and mediated by demographic and behavioural variables. The study investigated cultural festival attributes that are explanatory of brand association and on the bases of this proposed a model that simplifies the process of branding of cultural festivals using cluster and discriminant analysis. A convenience sample of 500 attendees drawn from the 2007 Calabar Carnival Festival was used for the study.


Introduction
There is a consensus that every organisation needs to develop strong brands as an essential part of its business strategy.The precise means of carrying these out are characterised by conceptual ambiguities (Kay, 2006).
There is a large array of methods and rules of branding in marketing literature.However, these methods of analyses and the rules are inconsistent and elusive (Kay, 2006).It is even more complex when one considers the branding of cultural festivals.It is inconsistent because the success stories of strong brands carried in marketing literature reflect the outcome of different approaches and different management principles.The branding of cultural festival is perceived to be even more complex because of peculiarities of cultural festivals compare to conventional services such as banking, telecommunication, automobile repairs, education, health care, etc.This means that there is no single approach to developing a strong brand.Kay (2006:472) cited Aaker (1996) who asserted that "developing the strength of a brand is not deemed to be easy".The question then is what is the best approach to branding?In response to this question, Kay (2006) challenged marketers to evolve alternative methods that are consistent and without contradictions.This paper is a response to this assertion.
There is copious literature on branding process of consumer goods in marketing text books, but scanty in the case of research outcomes in journal articles.The common models of branding ( Aaker Model, Brandz Model and Resonance Model) do not show the methodological sequence of the process.The common feature is the mention of brand equity drivers and effect on firm performance.It is these methodological inadequacies that motivate the authors to advocate for a process that will begin by identifying the brand attributes from customer perspective.This is contrary to what is found in most existing marketing literature.The major objective of this study is an attempt to develop a normative branding model for branding using a cultural festival.Secondly, to develop a scientific process for branding that will begin by identifying the brand attributes of the festival.Brand attributes are theoretically linked to the service concept: core attributes and the peripheral attributes of the product service (Anderson, Pearo & Widener, 2008).The relevant attributes will be generated through a research process.The core attributes refer to what the brand delivers or intends to deliver.The peripheral attributes is made up of the physical and interactional components.It refers to how it is delivered.The physical attributes include environmental, mechanical, and inanimate components of the service delivery.The interactional attributes include all aspects of the interpersonal encounters provider by the service providers.
A destination according to Jayswal (2008) "is a town, city or a place which has one or more attractions for tourists".These may be in the form of scenic sights, culture, leisure activities, shopping rebates, food and excursion, etc.The relationship between destination image, event and tourists visit has been established.It is believed that the benefits tourist enjoyed from an event is transferred to the host destination (Meyvis & Janiszewski 2004;Supphellen, Eismann & Hem, 2004).When an event is properly branded, it has the potentials of contributing to the host destination as a feature (attraction) to make the destination unique in nature and even popular to prospective visitors.This has motivated the authors to seek for a simple industry friendly branding process that will facilitate the branding of cultural event, so that at the long-run the event will serve as a promoter of the destination.
There are numerous cultural festivals in Nigeria, but only few of them are touristically developed and marketed.These include Agungu Fishing Festival, Osun Oshogbo Festival, Calabar Carnival Festival, Abuja cultural Festival, etc.The results of this study would help the marketers of cultural festivals and Destination Marketing Organisations (DMO) in Nigeria in developing strong brands, segmenting cultural festival markets and the targeting of identified and selected markets with brands that are produced through a simple and effective branding process.The following hypotheses would serve as the basis of the conceptual branding process proposed by the authors.
(1) Attendees' perceptions of branding attributes differ significantly on the bases of customer segments.
(2) The customer segments are significantly related to cultural festival brand associations.
(3) Customer segments differ significantly on the bases of demographic variables of cultural festival attendees.
(4) Customer segments differ significantly on the bases of the behavioural variables of cultural festival attendees.

The concept of branding
A brand is an identifier.It identifies a firm and/its product or service by the use of name, distinctive symbol which differentiates it from other competing firms, products or services in a given market.Branding refers to all the processes and activities involved in creating a brand.Kotler and Keller (2006:275) define branding as "endowing products and services with the power of a brand".According to them, a brand is a "perceptual entity that is rooted in reality, but reflects the perception and perhaps even the idiosyncrasies of consumers".
Branding is characterised by different approaches.Some of the common activities involved in branding process are determining a brand personality, brand positioning and brand identifiers (brand drivers).Brand personality refers to the specific mix of human traits that are attributed to a particular product or service.There is a general agreement that brands are endowed with personalities and that consumers have the tendency of choosing brands whose personality fit their own.Aaker (2004) identifies four brand personalities and these include -sincerity (down to earth, honest, wholesome and cheerful); excitement (daring, spirited, imaginative and up-to-date); competence (reliable, intelligent and successful); ruggedness (out doorsy and tough).Kotler and Keller (2006) suggest that brand personality can be built on product features, service and/or image or a combination of any of these two associations.They identified seven common personality traits which include self-confidence, dominance, autonomy, defense, sociability, defensiveness, and adaptability.
Brand positioning refers to how the brand is placed in the minds of the consumers.Positioning takes the images and shows how the brand personality compares to other competing product or service (Chacko).Brand identifiers or elements are those drivers that serve to identify and differentiate the brand.Brand identifiers are categorized into three: brand (brand name, logos, symbols, character, spokepeople, slogans, jingles, pages, and signage); the product (service and all accompanying marketing activities and supporting marketing programmes); and other associations indirectly transferred to the brand (a person, place or thing).

Cultural festival branding
There is plethora of literature on destination branding (Nickerson and Moisey, 1999;Echtner and Ritchei, 1993;Gartner, 1993;Baloglu and Brinberg, 1997;Henderson, 2007, Brent et al, 1998), but almost a total absence of study on cultural festival branding.Hankinson (2004) observes that brand was once assigned to consumer goods, but are now applicable to place and/or attraction.
To gain insight and understanding of festival branding, we shall draw from related studies on destination branding.This is because; cultural festivals are destination attractions and inadvertently share some attributes that influence visitors' decision to visit such destinations.Destination is the place where the attractions and hospitality are found (Cooper et al, 2005).Blain et al (2005:337) define destination branding as: "a set of marketing activities that (1) support the creation of a name, symbol, logo, word, mark or the other graphic that readily identifies and differentiates a destination.(2) consistently conveys the expectations of a memorable travel experience that is uniquely associated with the destination, that (3) serve to consolidate and reinforce the emotional connection between the visitor and the destination and that (4) reduces consumers search costs and perceived risk.Collectively these serve to create a destination image that positively influences consumer destination choice".This definition is comprehensive.It can be adopted for a description of cultural festival branding.This can be achieved by juxtaposing "cultural festival" where there is "destination" in the definition.The definition contains brand drivers as outcomes of marketing activities, benefits of branding and most importantly points to the relationship between destination image and consumer choices.Cultural festivals are tourists' attractions which take place in tourists' destinations.In this vein, cultural festival branding refers to the set of marketing activities involved in differentiating a cultural festival from competing festivals by use of name, marks, words, symbols, product or service, etc. thereby building a positive image of the festival in the minds of the consumers and ultimately consumer choice.

Branding attributes of cultural festivals
A review of literature shows that so much has been done in the area of attributes of tourists' destinations branding.These studies give us insight into the attributes of cultural festival branding.Gartner (1993) observes that destination image comprises of hierarchically interrelated components -cognitive, affective and conative.Echtner and Ritchie (1993) believe that a destination image involves features such as mountains and feelings or attributes such as friendly people.Baloglu and Brinberg (1999) found that the affective images of tourism destination countries varied across both positive and negative (sleeping, glooming, unpleasant and distressing) dimensions.Nickerson and Moisey (1999) argue that it is difficult for a marketer to provide an image such as relaxation, pleasantness, a challenging experience or something inspirational that would be interpreted in the same way by all potential visitors.They warned that portraying feelings and emotions in destination marketing campaign will certainly capture some of the consumers, but may inadvertently turn other people away.It was suggested that rather than attempting to portray a "place" through the photograph, it may be more advantageous to provide a visual image of a feature such as a mountain and allow the consumers to determine what feeling the mountain provides.
According to Crompton (1979), the concept of destination image is multidimensional, with cognitive and affective spheres and had been defined as an amalgam of the knowledge, feeling, belief and opinions, ideas, expectations and impressions that people have about a named location.Gunn (1988) suggests that there are two types of image creation outcomes -organic and induced.The organic image is created and founded on information sources such as the media, popular culture and schooling, while the induced images are a consequence of exposure to advertisement and guidebooks.Imagery or visualisation refers to consumers' attempt to construct an image of an event in order to estimate its likelihood or its goodness/badness.When consumers visualize an event, the event seems more likely because consumers exhibit a positivistic bias when they image themselves using the product or attending the event (Hoyer and McClnnis, 1997).It does appear that most of the studies in destination branding are in agreement that destination image should form the bases of a destination branding.
The cultural festival branding attributes is theoretically linked to service concept models (Anderson et al, 2008).For example, in cultural festival, the attributes of the bands and floats form the core service attributes of the carnival.The attributes of the place (destination) where the event is staged are regarded as peripheral attributes.The ambience of the environment, facilities, infrastructure, and presence of signage are a few examples of physical attributes of a cultural festival.The interactional attributes of a cultural festival can be defined by the attitude of residents toward tourism development and visitors to the event.Thompson (2003) from his neurological studies of brands (neuro-markets), gives brand managers new evidence of the power of brands.He found that when consumers are aware of a brand during a consumption experience, the brain scans revealed significant neurological responses.Brain imaging revealed substantial difference in neurological responses between products that were branded in comparison to similar consumption experiences in which consumers were unaware of the brand.It is believed that consumers react differently to consumption of products when they had knowledge of the brand.Brand knowledge affects product preference or product choice.Nowak et al (2006) observe that positive emotions, product quality, fair pricing, service quality, and customer commitment are predictors of brand equity.The study found that of all five attributes, customers' commitment has the highest predictive power.Nickerson and Moisey (1999) observe a significant relationship between destination attributes and recognition of destination by identified market segments.They further found that different market segments are more influenced by different features of a destination using different promotional campaigns.Hunt (1975) asserts that awareness is essential to tourism destination successes and competitiveness in the market place.He identified image as a critical factor in promotion strategy and that all places have images -good/bad and indifferent that must be identified and either changed or exploited.Henderson (2007) in "branding of Singapore" used the following attributes for analysis -product (lots to do, cultural diversity, cosmopolitan, world class infrastructure); delivery (accessibility, efficient friendly, and safe); experience (at ease, stress-free, welcome) and end benefit (fulfilling, satisfying, enjoyable, rewarding and enriching).Studies have also shown the inter-connectedness of destination image and destination brand identity in the minds of tourists and mechanism of marketing (Cai, 2002).

Background on the study area
The Calabar Carnival Festival is a brand organised and marketed by the Cross River Carnival Commission (CRCC).CRCC was established by the Cross River State Law Number 4 of 2006.It is "a body corporate" with perpetual succession and common seal and has power to sue and be sued in its corporate name.The festival is a product mix of the Cross River Christmas Festival.The carnival festival has five costumed Bands with different philosophical themes.The Bands and their pioneer leaders are: (1) Bayside Band -Donald Duke (Former Governor of the State) (2) Freedom Band -Captain Henry Briside (3) Master Blaster Band -Chief Gershom Bassey (4) Passion 4 Band -Mr.Christ Agibe (5) Seagull Band -Senator Florence Ita Giwa The Calabar Carnival Festival has had three editions (2005, 2006, and 2007).The objective of the festival is to among other things, promote the indigenous local and cultural heritage of the people in the visual arts, dance, arts and craft, indigenous music folklores, folksongs, etc. Cross River State is one of the 36 States of Nigeria and is in the South-South Geopolitical Zone.

Research design and sample size
A cross sectional survey design was used for the study.Attendees were intercepted along the carnival route.The study took place on the 27 th of December, 2007, being the third edition of the Calabar Carnival Festival.Samples of 500 spectators were surveyed.The sample was drawn using convenience sample design.Convenience sample is most appropriate for a carnival event because spectators are highly in transit and there is complete absence of a sampling frame.

Variables measurement
From relevant literature reviewed by the researchers, nine service quality variables of carnival festivals were considered for analysis.The nine variables are conceptualised as cultural festival branding attributes.The variables include event organisation (planning and co-ordination of event, event management, band composition , band costumes, dance, music and themes); promotion (creation of awareness about the event on national and international media); facilities (telephone services, transportation, computer services, accommodation); friendly locals; shopping (availability of shopping centers for attendees during event); refreshment and food (availability of restaurants and fast food places); ambience of the environment (signage, cleanliness, greenness and orderliness of the city hosting the festival); and safety and security (absence or minimal criminal activities or lawlessness).These variables were designated as cultural festival branding attributes.
Respondents were asked questions on the importance of each of the branding attributes in their decision to attend event, with "1" as not important and "5" as very important.Questions were also asked on attendees' demographic profile (gender, age, nationality, family monthly income, educational status) and behavioural characteristics (purpose of visit, number in group, group membership, mode of transportation to event, source of information, type of accommodation use).The validity of the instrument was enhanced through intensive scrutiny by three members of the Cross River Carnival Commission.Their contribution helped to strengthen the validity of the instrument.Reliability of the instrument was achieved by the use of Tourist Style Scale adapted from previous related studies (Henderson, 2007;Nowak et al, 2006).

Data collection and analysis
A structured questionnaire was used as the research instrument.The self administered questionnaire was administered on carnivalists who were engaged in the festival as spectators and found along the carnival route (Esuene Stadium, through Mary Slessor road, through Ndidem Usang Iso road, through MCC road, through Murtela Mohemmand Highway and back to the Stadium).A total of 417 copies of questionnaires were used for analysis after discarding the ones that were not properly filled.The sample consists of residents, day trippers and overnight visitors.
The Statistical Package for Social Sciences (SPSS) was used in data analysis.Descriptive statistics was used in calculating the mean importance of branding attributes.The Ward's Hierarchical Clustering Method with Squared Euclidean Distance was used to generate clusters of customer segments of attendees (Hair, Bush and, Ortinau, 2006).
Discriminant analysis was used to find the predictive power of the festival attributes.From methodological point of view, the discriminant analysis is one of the statistical methods applied in various studies of typology of buyers and buying actions.This was done by using the clusters (non-matric) as the dependent variable and the attributes as independent variables.Chi-square statistics was used to determine if there were significant differences between the clusters and the attendees' demographic and behavioural characteristics.

Demographic characteristics
The sample has more males than female attendees (male, 72.84%; female, 27.17%).85.2% were domestic attendees, while 14.9% were international attendees.Out of the 62 foreigners in the sample; there were more attendees from other African countries (33.9%).The age distribution shows that those within the age range of 40-49 (39.8%) were more in attendance.The data shows that they were more professionals followed by business persons.The income distribution shows that those who earned more than N100, 000 ($741) per month were more in attendance.Those who hold higher degrees were 39.1% and 33.1% for those with first degree.See table 1.

Attendees behavioural characteristics
The study elicited some behavioural characteristics of attendees.These include, reason for visiting, mode of travel, group membership and sources of information.The data shows that most of the attendees were at the carnival route because of the event (39.1%).On the mode of travel to the venue of the event, most of the attendees accessed the event venue by private cars (43.9%).From a list of six information sources, those who had know about the event were more in number, followed by those who got the information through television.To measure the level of spectators' attachment to event, respondents were asked whether they attended event last the previous and if they would attend the next year.Most of the respondents said they attended event last year.See table 2.

Inferential statistics H 1 : Attendees' perceptions of branding attributes differ significantly on the bases of customer segments.
To determine attendees' perception, respondents were asked to rate the importance attached to each of the nine branding attributes in their decision to attend the festival (organization, promotion, shopping, facilities, refreshment and food, friendly locals, infrastructure, ambience of environment and safety and security).To establish if there exist differences in attendees' perception of the importance of each of the attribute and customer segment, cluster analysis was performed.The respondents were clustered on the basis of the mean score on the attribute-importance scale.
The cluster analysis produced two clusters.Several clusters of the attendees' perception were done, but only the two cluster operation appeared to produce a result most suitable for this study.It was found that above two clusters, there tend to be very small representation which makes the clusters unreasonable for market analysis.To determine the importance of each attribute as expressed by respondents in each of the two clusters, Analysis of Variance (ANOVA) was conducted.The result of ANOVA shows that all nine attributes contribute in differentiating the clusters (p < 0.001) as shown in table 3.This finding supports the hypothesis that seeks to establish if there exist significant difference between attendee's perception of branding attributes and customer segments.Secondly, accompanying descriptive statistics shows that in cluster one, all the attributes scored above average.Promotion had the highest mean score, while infrastructure had the least mean score.Respondents in cluster two rated branding attributes much higher than those in cluster one, except for infrastructure which was score below average (1.52).A comparison of the two clusters revealed that cluster one had 63% of the sample, while cluster two had 37%.Because cluster two had higher mean score on all attributes (except infrastructure) it indicates high customers' requirements.Attendees in cluster two are not infrastructure based, but showed high sensitivity to the other eight attributes.Cluster two was therefore christened 'Active Carnivalists'.Respondents in cluster one attached moderate importance to branding attributes.This is because the attendees scored attributes much lower than those in cluster two and showed much more concern for infrastructure at the destination.Cluster one was therefore christened 'Ideal Carnivalists'.See table 3.
H 2: The customer segments are significantly related to cultural festival brand associations.
Brand associations are operationally define as those brand attributes that the attendees considered in their choice set.Discriminant analysis was used to establish the relationship between customer segments and brand associations.Conceptually, brand associations are those cultural festival attributes with high predictive power.The result of discriminant analysis shows a very high discriminant function.(Wilk's Lambda of 0.000) and the predictive accuracy is of 94.5 percent.This signifies that the cluster membership is correctly classified and excellently predicted.The Structure Matrix as shown in table 4 shows the predictive power of each of the branding attributes.To select attributes with high predictive power, Hair et al (2006), advised that the numbers in the function column that are .30and above are usually considered.In this study, attributes with the highest predictive power are facilities, (0.464), refreshment and food (0.447), safety and security 90.438), organization (0.337), and friendly locals (0.314).These attributes represent the brand associations.This finding supports the assumption that there is a relationship between the customer segments and brand associations.
H 3a: Customer segments differ significantly on the bases of demographic variables of cultural festival attendees.

H 3b : Customer segments differ significantly on the bases of the behavioural variables of cultural festival attendees.
The result of Chi-Square test shows that there is no significant difference in the perception of customer segment in terms of demographic variables of attendees.The cross tabulation method shows that all the demographic factors were not significant at p <0.05.This means that attendees in each segment have approximately the same demographic profile (gender, age, income employment status, educational level and nationality).This finding did not support H 3a .Significant differences were observed in attendees perception of festival attributes in terms of some behavioural characteristics: group membership (X 2 , p < 0.05), purpose of travel (x 2 , p <0.00I), sources of information (x 2 , p<.05), past experience (x 2 , p < 0.05) and repeat visit (x 2 , p < 0.001).Tourists' perception in the two customer segments did not show any significant differences in terms of accommodation type, night spent in destination.This means that tourists in each of the segments have approximately the same distribution with respect to accommodation type and nights spent.This finding supports H 3b.
There were more respondents distributed across cluster one than cluster two.In terms of travel motive, majority of respondents who attended event with the purpose of also seeing friends / family, vacation, and business were found in cluster one, while majority of those whose motive is only the carnival (51.8%) are in cluster two.In terms of mode of travel, there were more of those who used private cars, rented car, taxi, buses and bikes in cluster one and more of those who used airplane and trekking in cluster two.See table 5.

Discussion and implication of findings
It has been pointed out that existing marketing literature is lacking in the development of simple and scientific branding process despite many decades of the popularity of the concept (Kay, 2006).The model formulation is guided by the result of hypotheses tested in this research.The result of the first hypothesis shows that attendees' perception of branding attributes of cultural festival differ between market segments.Because of the diversities in the cultural festival market, attributes of events are perceived differently by different market participants.The attributes with high mean importance and that enjoy statistical significance were included in the preliminary list or consideration set.Those without statistical significance were discarded from further analysis.However, in this study all nine attributes show significance difference.The marketing concept gives impetus to this approach because the identification of relevant market segments gives deeper understanding of the market characteristics and visitors in the the different markets.The branding attributes are a combination of the event attributes and place attributes.The identification of two typology of carnivalist will enhance effective target marketing by brand managers.The Active Carnivalists are few but exert more pressure on event organizers and Destination Marketing Organisation (DMO) and may likely have implication for competitive sustainability of the destination.
The brand associations are identified by their predictive power.The brand attributes with high predictive power were captured and used to form the brand identifiers.The brand personality is also generated from the brand associations.Studies have confirmed the relationship between brand associations and brand equity (Nowak et al, 2006).The Calabar Carnival brand associations include facilities, refreshment/food, safety and security, organization and friendly locals.The brand position statement is composed after identifying the brand associations of the festival.It is only those brand associations that have high predictive power that should be used to form the brand positioning.In order word, provide an image that will evoke those characteristic and associate those attributes with the festival.It is similar to the unique selling position (USP) that sells a product or service.Brand is a promise that the product or service would deliver the expected benefit (Kotler and Keller, 2006).In the same vein, the brand position statement is akin to a promise that the festival would offer certain benefits to visitors.The brand position statement is encoded and transmitted as brand identifiers or drivers.This is the branding activity that is most obvious to marketing professionals and non professionals.
The fact that none of the demographic variables show significance between clusters means that they have no mediatory effect on the perception of attendees to the cultural festival and should not form the basis of branding.The behavioural variables (group composition, travel motive, mode of transportation, source of information and previous experience) that show significant dependence have mediatory effect on the perception of cultural festival attendees.The implication is that the brand drivers such as logo, brand name, jingles, signage slogans, etc. are more effective if such variable are take into consideration when designing and developing the media that will convey the brand associations and personality to the consumers in the selected market segments.The conceptual model has six components: Component 1: Identification of brand attributes.Sources of attributes include survey of literature, the marketers' past experience, expert opinion, focus group discussion, etc.
Component 2: Measure the mean importance of festival attributes and establish differences between market segments using a statistical tool (ANOVA).
Component 3: Capture the predictive power of festival branding attributes to ascertain their influences on visitors' decision to attend a festival.
Form brand associations and brand personality using attributes with high predictive power.
Component 4: Analysis of target markets to measure mediatory role of demographic and behavioural characteristics on attendees' perception by market segments.
Component 5: Prepare a brand positioning statement for each target market base on findings in component 3 and 4.
Component 6: Creatively select brand drivers.The common brand drivers include slogan, single, logo, brand names signage, etc.It is these drivers that transmit the brand associations and positioning to the selected markets.
The brand driver used by the Calabar Carnival is a logo.The logo has a distinctive symbol showing a lady with two colourful stretched-out wings.The slogan is, "celebrating our heritage through culture".The logo does not carry any brand associations.This is probably because the brand managers did not establish the brand associations before attempting to brand the carnival.From the analysis of attributes, the Calabar Carnival Festival conveys the following images: well attended and promoted cultural festival; a friendly and hospitable people, beautiful drama, glamour resulting from the organisation (well organised), refreshing experience that makes one want to stay longer because of the cuisines (gastronomical).
The paper is concerned with the process of branding, since it is said that the "the means justifies the end".The authors argue that a simple and scientifically, based process of branding festival and by extension other services is likely to impact more on brand equity.This model could be adopted and extended to consumer and industrial goods.The replicability of the process is accounted for by the general scientific principles involved in the model development.

Conclusion
Branding of cultural festival is a relatively new domain of marketing.This is because branding was in time past more commonly associated with consumers goods.But with the increased interest in place and event marketing, it has become an imperative for academics and practitioners to develop simpler and theory based methods of branding cultural events.The methodology presented in this study, to a large extent would reduce the difficulty and complexity encountered by cultural festival brand managers.This approach is different from the suggestion by Nickerson and Moisey, (1999), that only features should be used in branding a destination and by extension cultural festivals.The use of statistical tools to establish brand associations upon which the brand personality and positioning are built makes this model scientific and theory based.It is hope that, if cultural festivals are properly branded by organisers and Destination Marketing Organisations (DMOs), positive brand building attributes will be transferred to the destination, thereby increasing the overall brand competitiveness of the festival and destination and ultimately led increase in visitors' arrival and revenue receipts.A poorly branded event would also transfer negative branding attributes.A well branded event has the advantage of co-branding itself and the destination, hence the need to brand cultural festivals as destination attractions.
The major limitation is the fact that the attributes used for investigation are drawn from literature search.It is suggested that more attributes should be considered during the attributes-importance measurement stage.The attributes could be generated from a focus group discussion.It should also involve different cultural festivals, other than carnivals suggested.Secondly, it is suggested that, there is strong need for a study to analyse factors that influence marketers' choice of cultural festival brand drivers and their effectiveness on brand equity.This is to enhance the match between brand associations, brand personality and the medium that would convey the message that will evoke a corresponding image.

Table 3 .
Mean importance of branding attributes by clusters

Table 4 .
Structure matrix showing predictive power of festival attributes groups correations between discriminating variables and standardized canonical discriminant functions Variables ordered by absolute size of correlation within function.*Note:Only attributes with 0.30 were considered as having high predictive power