Event marketing studies and what they mean for Canadian

Updated November 2026

Half of the consumers in the 2021 EventTrack survey lived in Canada, and 91% of that group said taking part in a brand event made them more inclined to buy a product they were interested in. In the 2015 edition, 65% reported buying at the event or on the visit. These are declared answers, not sales records.

A short guide to the sources

Canadian organisers of festivals, tournaments, trade fairs and seasonal markets mostly borrow their statistics from American trade research. Two things set the sources below apart from the usual list of loose percentages: each one was opened and read for this article, and each is linked where its number appears. Where we could read only a summary page, we say so.

Brown beaver costumed mascot at a community outdoor skating rink with a hot chocolate stand (illustration)
Illustration created with AI

The one survey with a Canadian half

The EventTrack 2021 report from Event Marketer and Mosaic gathered 1,590 consumer responses by email between July 2020 and January 2021, from people in the United States and Canada who had taken part in branded events. Half of them lived in Canada, and the methodology page breaks that half down by province: Ontario 52%, Quebec 13%, British Columbia 13%, Alberta 7%, the rest in smaller shares. The headline results are given for the whole sample, not by country, so this is the nearest thing to Canadian data rather than data on Canada alone.

Its headline figure is that 91% of consumers said taking part in an event made them more inclined to buy the brand, assuming they were interested in the product. A softer measure sits beside it: 46% felt more positive about the brand afterwards and 41% felt the same. More than 40% said they became more loyal. The events respondents had attended in the previous 24 months were mostly in-store (62%), followed by trade shows (24%), festivals, sporting events and pop-up stores (21% each). The authors also report that 78% preferred live in-person experiences to digital ones, down from 88% the year before, and that a third of respondents said their life priorities had changed during the pandemic.

The report quotes a consumer who wrote that it is hard to replace the assurance of being able to touch and feel a product before buying. That sentence explains more of the appeal of a live character than most percentages do.

What the 2015 and 2026 benchmarks add

The earlier EventTrack consumer survey, 2015 found 65% of respondents purchasing at the event or during the visit, compared with 54% the year before. Its respondents were also drawn from the United States and Canada. Eleven years later, the EventTrack 2026 summary page announces a sample of more than 1,000 Fortune 1000 marketers and attendees, with 61% of consumers more inclined to purchase after an event and, on average across business-to-business and consumer sectors, 57% planning to increase event attendance. The full 2026 report is gated, so we have read only the summary and cannot say how the questions were worded.

Small organisations and the trade show audience

Not every Canadian event is run by a large brand. The CEIR study Profiles of Attendees and Exhibitors, 2012 found that 94% of trade show attendees had some net-buying influence in their organisations, whether by specifying, recommending, deciding the need or taking the final decision. It also found that 61% of exhibiting companies had between one and 99 employees. The data are more than ten years old and relate to business-to-business shows, so they say what kind of people attend, not what events produce.

A more modest case is in a Frontiers in Psychology study of 238 runners, 2021, questioned right after a small sponsored race. Brand equity was the strongest influence on intention to buy the sponsor's products, followed by experiential activation. The authors suggest on-the-spot experience areas, and note that the company had sponsored the event for the first time, which limits what the result can show.

What is known about mascots specifically

Research on mascots at events remains thin. The Scientific Reports paper of 2025, based on 33,516 online reviews and a survey of 400 people, links a mascot's uniqueness, anthropomorphism, intimacy and consistency to a more favourable attitude towards a sporting event. The authors flag cultural preference, age and sponsor relevance as possible confounders. As far as we read, it does not address Canadian audiences, French-speaking or English-speaking, and we found no source that reports results by language.

Limits and method

Event surveys ask participants, which skews the sample toward people who liked the event enough to attend. They record intention and memory. The 91% figure comes from a survey fielded during the pandemic, and the same report shows the preference for in-person experiences falling in a year, so these answers move. Percentages such as 85% and 98% of consumers more likely to buy after an event are repeated on many websites. We could not locate the original study or the question for either, so we leave them out.

What this means for a Canadian team, festival or company ordering a mascot

A mascot suits a calendar of repeated moments: a home opener, a winter carnival, a summer market, a trade fair. The studies offer no figure for its effect, and we make no promise on results. They do suggest practical choices.

  • Pick the languages your public speaks and prepare the character's name and short text in both, if that is your market.
  • Choose the colours, logo and wording on the product page, then check the drawing before manufacture.
  • Decide who wears the costume through a long outdoor season, and plan breaks and storage for the cold months.
  • Give the character an on-the-spot role, a place visitors can find it, in line with the experience-area idea from the runner study.

Sources

Frequently asked questions

Is there Canadian data on events and buying?

One survey, EventTrack 2021, had half of its 1,590 consumers in Canada. Its headline results cover the whole sample, not Canada alone.

Do the surveys cover French-speaking Canada?

We found no source that reports results by language. We do not claim anything specific for Quebec or French-speaking communities.

Why is the 91% figure not a sales figure?

It records how many consumers said an event made them more inclined to buy, assuming interest in the product. That is declared inclination, not purchases.

Do seasons change the results?

None of the studies we read analyses seasonality, so we cannot say.

Which figures do you leave out?

The widely repeated 85% and 98% figures, since we could not trace them to an original study.

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