Experience marketing in large events: an exploratory study at rio 2016 olympic games

The expectation around the behavioral changes that would mark the new millennium stimulatedstudies since the 1980s revealing a paradigm shift in the discourse on marketing and brands. Theconcept of experience was introduced as the new trend for business and consumer studies (Holbrook,Hirschman, 1982, Pine II, Gillmore 1998, Schmitt 2001). The idea defended by the scholars of thesubject is that, in the contemporaneity, the promotion of memorable experiences allows to establisha deeper relation with the consumer. The present study sought to analyze how experience marketinghas been applied by companies in Brazil, focusing on the companies that sponsored the Rio 2016Olympic Games. We analyzed the experiences of people who participated actively or passively inexperience marketing initiatives of the sponsoring brands during the Olympic period. The researchresults point out that experience marketing awakens consumers interest in the brand and activity inquestion, feeling that it is being valued as a customer, generates real interactions and, lastly,modifying the consumer's view of the brand, generating a positive attitude towards it. However, it isimportant to note that each brand carries out a different kind of approach, generating different degreesof brand engagement, depending on the impact of its strategies.