Abstract

Understanding Festivals as cultural events immersed within a social and cultural network, leads to understand these economic events beyond what can be reasoned from the crossing of the curves of supply and demand. An approach to cultural events such as festivals from a social heuristics perspective has been made based on fieldwork in the Algarroba Folk Festival in Galeras (Sucre, Colombia) undertaken by the EAN University consultants in partnership with the Ministry of Culture, grounded in an ethnographic methodology under which are designed research tools such as surveys of people participating in the festival. Gathered data is analyzed under two constituent elements of social heuristics in consumer behavior: “herd behavior”; and “collective knowledge”. As a result, it is concluded that some elements of social heuristics and its characteristics can be found in social and cultural events as Festivals, which can derive in economic dealings of significant importance. This article contains excerpts from the studies by EAN University consultants in partnership with the Ministry of Culture “Economic Impact, Social, and Cultural Value in Six Festivals in Colombia”; and the Algarroba Folk Festival in Galeras, named above.