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Event Management: Promising Horizons

Volume 15, Number 2 Article by Seema Gupta June, 2003

Event Management: Promising Horizons :

The increasing corporate disillusionment with traditional media due to increased clutter, escalating costs and reduced efficiency has created opportunities suitable for event marketing. Event marketing allows a company to break through the advertising clutter, and target an audience by enhancing or creating an image through an association with a particular event, while reinforcing the product or service, and driving sales. Just taking off in India, the industry was estimated to be a Rs 300 crore (Rs 3 bn)industry in 2000, and is expected to grow ten fold in the next five years. Providing an update on the topic, Seema Gupta examines the literature to identify the key issues for both practitioners and academics.

The literature on the subject can be divided into number of themes like setting objectives, event selection, measurement of effectiveness, celebrity endorsements and integration with strategic planning. The primary objectives of event marketing are generating awareness, reaching target markets, building relationships, enhancing image and increasing sales. Organisations must carefully select events that will help them in achieving their own unique objectives, first determining the desired scope of the event and then achieving a brand-event personality fit. Although some researchers have developed models for event selection, there is a lot of scope for developing conceptual frameworks for selecting events that will help in the attainment of marketing objectives.

Sponsorship of events has become an established communication tool for building brand awareness, brand image and corporate image. Large corporates are increasingly sponsoring events and using brand ambassadors to market their brands to a focussed audience. Research indicates that the impact of celebrity endorsement announcements on stock returns is positive. The future is expected to see more and larger events, sale of television rights, merchandising rights and Internet rights. However event marketing will be required to demonstrate its effectiveness in comparison with other promotional activities in reaching target audiences. Rigorously designed experiments are needed to further our understanding of consumers' perceptions of, and reactions to event marketing stimuli. The lack of a systematised body of knowledge and conceptual framework on which to base scientific inquiry must be rectified, and measurement models developed. Finally, event management needs to become more fully integrated in overall communication programme in both research and practice.

Reprint No 03207