Factors for Events Management

Events play such a vital role in today’s society, when it comes to events lots of academic authors have different perspectives on what an event is and the importance of events in different areas. An event could be considered a gathering as Matthews (1997, p. 2) suggests that an event would be considered any type of gathering that occurs at a given time in a given place. This would suggest that an event could take place anywhere for any reason as it is a moment in time in which a gathering is scheduled that takes place in a social area or a unique moment in time to celebrate a moment in time. This would suggest that events are temporary activity and Bladen (2012, p. 4) goes on to further acknowledge that an event is an organised activity that most has a begging and an end time but not always necessarily the case in the outcome of a spontaneous event, which takes place without as much specific planning. Events are really important as Shone (2013) suggests that any excuse to have a good celebration is widely sought after through many different ways such as festivals, conferences, or more traditional celebrations and rituals. This would once again suggest the importance of events to the public, as it is a way of breaking out of the daily routine and events have importance to everybody at some point though-out their lives. Schone continues to go on suggesting that everybody is so used to special events that they almost lose their context. Another way of defining events could be classing them into different sizes, as not all events are the same, a personal event such as a birthday would be considered a micro event whereas an event such as the Olympics would be considered a mega event that has the ability to impact a whole economy. As stated, earlier events are the centre of culture and Bowdin (2012) goes on suggesting that an increase in leisure time has led to and rapid increase of public events. This is could be a main reason that sectors have started to appear within the events stage as they all now start to have different meanings and target different audiences and give out more perspectives.

For a consumer, an event may have a completely different meaning for them compared to an event manager as they both have different wants and outcomes for an event. For a consumer, they may have multiple different reasons for going to an event such as gaining knowledge, relaxing, having a sense of community, fundraising etc. For an event manager they are mostly looking at how to make an event memorable, or how to make consumer have an experience they can gain from. Paying attention to the emotions of consumers is very important and Plutchik (1997) theorised this by creating a wheel of emotions, which shows different types of emotions that a consumer may feel and how that will affect the person. This is beneficial to an event manager as it shows them how to harness the ability of controlling emotion to enhance an event. The rapid growth of events over time has led to a shaping of identifiable sectors within the events industry as Bladen (2012, p. 277) goes on to imply, there are three different event sectors which are:

• The public sector- Central government, government agencies
• The private sector- Private companies, corporations or induvial seeking profit
• The third sector- Voluntary groups, charities

Events can be looked at in many different ways, as all three sectors have different understandings of what an event is due to having different perspectives of the area. Within the government sector there are many different roles in event management that they have to cover as Allen (2008, p. 39-41) goes over such as venue management, regulation, event organisation etc. The government have a completely different look compared to the other two sectors, as the public sector looks to educate, entertain to potentially attempt to break down social barriers whereas the other event sectors have completely different aims. A charity would look at events differently from the public sector because they will have different aims from one another. A charity would look more at raising awareness or fundraising to help a specific target audience. This does not mean there are no similarities between sectors as the third sector as Bladen (2012) suggests, the public and third sector do both aim to deliver services although in potentially completely different areas, the third sector will sometimes use the public sectors funding to use for the community. The private sector will have completely different motivations for events as they may purely look an event as profit oriented, to increase sales etc as this is supported by Raj (2017) as he goes onto say that some events have a clear financial objective, and this could achieved in many different ways such as selling tickets, raffles etc. A private sector event may have a more qualitative objective instead of running an event that was more focused on creating memories or educate such as the other sectors.

Reference list:

• Allen. J Festival and special event management. 5th edn (2010) edn. Milton, Qld.: Wiley (Wiley Australia tourism series).
• Bladen, C., Kennell, J., Abson, E. and Wilde, N., 2012. Events management: An introduction. Routledge.
• Bowdin, G., Allen, J., Harris, R., McDonnell, I. and O'Toole, W., 2012. Events management. Routledge.
• Matthews, D. (1997) Special event production. The process
• Plutchik, R.E. and Conte, H.R., 1997. Circumplex models of personality and emotions. American Psychological Association.
• Raj, R., Walters, P. and Rashid, T. (2017) Events management: principles & practice. 3rd edn. Los Angeles: SAGE.
• Shone, A. and Parry, B. (2013) Successful event management: a practical handbook. 4th edn. Andover: Cengage Learning.