what are events

 

 Introduction:

We attend functions and ceremonies of family’s, friend's -birthday parties, marriage ceremony, annual gatherings etc. these functions or parties celebrated on special occasions communicate some message to the attendees and public and are called events.

 

Meaning of Events

 Events are public assembly for the purpose of celebration, education, marketing, or reunion to communicate particular messages to target audiences.

Definition of event

According to Getz,” Events are temporary occurrences, either planned or unplanned with a finite length of time.”

For example concerts like Indian idol, competitions like a master chef, Annual gatherings -annual day functions at college, etc. These are planned temporary occurrences with a finite length of time.

 

 According to Gold Blatt,” A special event recognizes a unique moment in the time with ceremony and ritual to satisfy special needs”

For example : marriages, birthday parties, annual gatherings of  companies and institutions identify the unique moment of a person or family or institution's through  ceremony or ritual and satisfy their cultural needs.

In business and marketing world, an event is considered one of the strategic marketing and communication tool by all sizes of companies.

Here events are highly targeted brand associate activities and are customer-oriented promotion activities. Most events are sponsored to increase the awareness of the brand to reach out to the target audience who has come to witness the event.

For example, when Maruti sells car it is not an event but when its millionth unit is sold and for this occasion if Maruti Company celebrates it and brings people together to get publicity is called an event.

 

Features of events

 

Fig 1

The features of events are described as follows

1. Uniqueness:

 Each event is unique means each one will be different from the other.  It is different in terms of participants, the surroundings, the audience, or any number of other variables that will make the event unique. It cannot be repeated in exactly the same way. Events offer a “once in a life’’ experience.

 For example ICC world cup happens every 5 years, it is a repeat edition but each is unique because it had different athletes, different organizers, and different audience, performed indifferent place.

2. Perishability

 Perishability here relates to the use of facilities for events. They are specific occurrences designed to meet certain objectives.

Example: An Individual has a Banqueting room and used to its peak capacity only on Saturdays for weddings so the rest of the week its revenue-generating potential may not be exploited. If the room is empty for even one day of the week the revenue-generating the potential of that day is lost- it is very perishable. The room can be used on a different day, but the day it is empty cannot be replayed and used for an event.

3. Intangibility

With events the activity is more or less intangible. for example when we go to a wedding, we will experience the activities like engagement ceremony, mehndi, Haldi ceremony, sangeet ceremony .etc, join in, enjoy and remember these activities which are intangible  (enjoyment,happiness and feelings or experiences).

But there are only a few tangible things that we’ve got from the marriage. For example, a piece of wedding cake, photographs, or video are the efforts to make the experience of the event more tangible.

4. Ambience (atmosphere) and service

The ambiance is one of the most important outcomes of the event. The right ambiance gives huge success and the wrong ambiance will give huge failure.

For example: At a personal event like a birthday party the ambiance may be simply created by the people who are there without the need for anything else or simple decoration among the good company of friends and family members which can make an excellent event.

5. Personal contact and interaction

Events are public the assembly where people meet with each other and become part of the event process. For example, guess at Christmas party meet and interact with Each other with the hosts and entertainers that create an enjoyable atmosphere.

6. Labour intensiveness

All events are labor intensive in nature in terms of organization and of operation. The organizational issue relates to the need for a relatively complicated planning to enable service delivery to be efficient (Due to this reason many events are outsourced to event management companies, caterers, or other types of event suppliers)

For example a banquet for 300 people will require not only food service staff, kitchen staff and management and support staff like Clock room attendants, cleaners, and staff to set up and breakdown the room.

7. Fixed time scale

Events run to a fixed time scale, unlike routine activities. The time skill could be very short such as for the opening ceremony of a new college or very long where the planning phase took about 3 years.