The Failure of a Large Swedish Music Event, Peace & Love Essay

Purposes

• The article explores the factors that led to the failure of a large Swedish music event, Peace & Love, in 2013.
• Considering that a lot of stakeholders were affected by the failure, the study not only provides a deeper insight into actual reasons why the festival management declared bankruptcy but also can potentially clarify how adverse ethical and economic consequences of such a failure could be avoided.

Methodology

• The problem is analyzed by using the organizational ecology framework: Nordvall and Heldt (2017) investigated the event in the environmental context, focusing on competition.
• The researchers employed qualitative methodology and semi-structured interviews with the festival management as the primary data collection tool.
• They also gathered data (such as user posts and comments) from social media and other relevant online forums.
• While interview replies were analyzed by using content analysis, social media data was evaluated with the help of an analytical coding-based method.

Findings and Conclusions

• Study findings reveal that Peace & Love failed mainly because the organization was in a vulnerable position and competition in the Swedish music festival industry increased.
• As the festival market grew mature, a greater number of competitors emerged and, thus, customers were provided with a larger number of options to choose from and many preferred another, more attractive festival that took place in Sweden at the same time when Peace & Love was planned to start.
• Considering this, Nordvall and Heldt (2017) call the studied event failure as “death by natural selection” (p. 182).
• They conclude the article by noting that the implementation of the organizational ecology framework successfully led to a profound explanation of the case. However, the researchers suggest that, in order to increase the credibility of findings, more research of similar cases and different festival funding models is required.

Reference

Nordvall, A., & Heldt, T. (2017). Understanding hallmark event failure: A case study of a Swedish music festival. International Journal of Event and Festival Management, 8(2), 172-185.