The Event Management Industry - Term Paper Example

This paper presents an over view of how service quality issues can be taken care of in the event management industry and presents examples of the same using service components such as the gaps, design, delivery, failure and recovery. Introduction According to Wagen (2008), one of the most popular and well growing industries of the past decade or two has arguable been event management business that has grown tremendously in almost all regions in the world. If one would ask about the booming industries of today, one of the most definite answers, other than telecommunication industry, would be the event management industry. In the past decade or so, alongside other industries in the services sector, event management has grown at a phenomenal rate in almost all parts of the world. From organizing a marriage to a conference and from managing exhibitions to managing concerts, parties, conferences, and literally any and everything else; event management has boomed from all ends, and today holds a critical share in the services sector. A major reason for this extreme boom has been the economic rise in the global landscape, whereby, the increasing economic activity has given birth and movement to this industry. Today, thousands of event management firms operate globally, and are running successfully, despite the economic down turn; the attempt to move towards a boom has pulled the graph of events occurring even further up, as each attempt to bring about more and more business for moving their economy out of recession. Event management is a profession as well as an art; a science that exercises many management skills of an individual. The following section illustrates the literature review of the service issues associated with event management. Literature Review In accordance with Kilkenny (2007), the gurus of management state that services concerns have a much wider scope of issues to deal with than manufacturers or sellers of products, because products are generally machine built, tangible and it’s easier to measure their quality, while at the same time it is difficult to measure quality in services due to their attribute of intangibility. Cuskelly (2000) states that service is all about an experience, whereas experience depends on the mood of the consumer. While the taste of PEPSI (a product) may seem similar to an individual (even if it varies a bit) but the quality of massage (a service) would definitely seem different (better or worse) but would hardly be considered as of the same quality as received previously. Subsequently, there occur various issues with services that would be discussed below with the context of event management, but before that, a brief overview of the service aspect associated to event management is discussed. Likewise in any other service concern, Parry (2004) states that event management also needs to deal with the service related issues. The biggest issue with services, as highlighted in various text resources is that services satisfaction levels are difficult to retain and manage, not simply because services mainly involve human element from the services side and these are difficult to replicate at the same level, but because the customer would definitely not be in the same frame of mind all the time. Subsequently, at one point in time, the customer may like the service, and the same level of service would not be liked at another stance. However, the scope of the literature review herewith is restricted towards the service provider’s issues. As mentioned, in the introduction of literature review, there is service quality issues associated with all services concerns, and therefore, it is critical for service providers to ensure that they manage the concerns of the service that they deliver. Following are some of the potential issues associated with services concerns, and their context with reference to event management shall be discussed: Gaps Design Delivery Failure Recovery The following discussion elaborates on each of these components one after the other. Service Gaps are defined, as per Tassiopoulos (2005), as a differential of the present quality of service being provided compared to the ideal quality of service or the standard quality of service. It is critical for a service concern to identify both of these variables, and it truly is not very difficult to do so. For identifying the present quality of service, the managers should talk to the customers, employees and talk to people around in an event to have a feedback and from that, the quality of present services can be identified. Identifying the ideal quality of service can be tricky; this involves industry interaction, interacting the industry professionals, auditing various events taking place, comparing and contrasting various competitors and their respective events, and so on. And the difference of the two leads to the service gaps. Up to here, the job can be done by researchers, but the real challenge for an event manager starts from this point whereby they take up the responsibility of bridging this gap, for which, mainly benchmarking is used as a standard technique, whereby, the existing benchmarks are revised to match or even move beyond the ideal quality of service. Once these bench marks are developed, employees are trained and empowered to ensure that they give their best shot to achieve these benchmarks and go beyond. If such activities of identifying and overcoming the service gaps are repeated at regular intervals, the firm can develop itself as an industry leader. In the event management industry, it is difficult to come across these because the gaps are either too big blunders or too minute to be visualized. This is where a true manager’s skill set comes into play. Service Design can be defined as an activity, in accordance with, Tassiopoulos (2005) that aims purely at planning and organizing resources (such as human resource, technological resource, infrastructure, materials, etc.) with aim of improving quality with each next design. In an event management firm, service design is critical, because customers in services industry seek customization, rather than generalization. Silvers (2003) states that this is similar to changing a menu in a restaurant, the event management firms need to have that flexibility about their packages offered to clients. In case of event management, it is often proposed for a better deal that the event managers do not keep a pre-planned packages as they call it but a better practice has been to keep either customizable packages or flexible deals, as when these are offered to the clients, the sales representative can add or remove components of the deal to make it a viable and acceptable package for the client, and customize it to their needs. For example, the presence of a devoted event manager, other than the presence of support and helping staff can be an add-on that some clients would want and others won’t. From the similar grass roots, the concept of customization and mass customization comes into existence, through which, service clients are entertained. Add-ons, as used by various restaurants and other service providers to enhance their service design and to provide variety to their existing portfolio of products and services. A similar tactics can be used by event management firms, to give more variety of flavors to the customers. Service Delivery implies the deliverance of service from the point sales of service provider to the time where it ends, as stated by Tassiopoulos (2005). In even management concerns, service delivery is a cycle that initiates from the time when a customer approaches an event management with a plan or proposal of their event gets a quotation, approves it, and the event proceedings initiate, till the time when the event is completed and the due payments are made alongside the feedback. For an event management firm, the service delivery is the critical stand point whereby the revenues are generated and future revenues are guaranteed. This phase of the service is where the existing, prospect and probable customers interact with the firm, and in turn their chances for getting business from them enhances. For example, while visiting an exhibition or a conference, visitors, in particular the corporate visitors tend to see how the organization and management of the event has been done, and they approach the vendors for getting similar or better services in the future for their own events. Service Failure is considered, as per Tassiopoulos (2005), as the failure of a service to satisfy the customer to any level. Failure of services generally takes place when the quality of service delivered falls below the minimum expectancy level of the quality of service. In event management, this is a very common phenomenon because customers try prevailing an upper hand, therefore, even when they are satisfied with the service, they show dissatisfaction, to bargain a better deal, especially in futuristic events. For taking care of such a scenario, the event management firms should involve themselves in taking regular and constant feedbacks from the customers as well as the participants of the events. Service failure is often a reality too whereby event management firms do not act in a very professional manner and fail to deliver what the customer asks for in terms of quality of service. In accordance with Moran CSEP (2007), these are generally witnessed when the smaller players of the market do not perform up to the task and fail to develop their business. In such a scenario, customers tend to move towards more professional and bigger players of the event management industry, and thus business tends to shift its focus, and the share of the pie becomes concentrated towards certain bigger players. Service Recovery is a critical phenomenon when it comes to services sector, in accordance with Tassiopoulos (2005); it implies that an appropriate service recovery system can convert an angry or frustrated customer into a loyal customer. Rather, an appropriate service recovery system can lead to creation of goodwill for a firm, more than had it been if things went right in the first place i.e. without service failure. McDonnell (2008) states that, however, reveal that the service recovery efforts are not always targeted towards customer satisfaction. The key point is that the firm should realize where a service recovery would lead to increasing customer satisfaction and where other variables would be influenced. Therefore, the most affluent variable should be influenced using service recovery mechanism or exercise. The effective service recoveries are mostly those where the service failure is assumed to be not methodical or when the firm has very less control over it. However, even when cases are of a orderly malfunction and the firm has control over the failure there is an advantage for when service recovery activities are placed in to act to guarantee that one can get client’s loyalty and the source of failure is eradicated. Conclusion Event management is a classical mechanism for attracting foreign investment in a country. The quality of service being provided by the business is what would truly attract foreign investment. Supovitz (2005) states that foreign investment is a major driver of the economy; thus, event management can be assumed as a safe driver for the economy. Consider the example as stated by Allen (2000) that if the event management firms of UAE tend to organize exhibitions at regular intervals and invites brightest prospects for investment in a country. Subsequently, foreign investors would assume this to be an invitation and a friendly gesture for coming to the Arab state. Therefore the success of event management industry is critical. Having stated the same, being a service concern, quality issues are critical to take care of, and within the quality of service issues, gaps, delivery, design, failure and recovery issues, need to be taken care of. There are practical examples and implications of how critical these issues are towards a services firm. References Alistair Boag, Graham Cuskelly (2000) Event Management. Australian Sports Commission Anton Shone, Bryn Parry (2004) Successful event management: a practical handbook. Cengage Learning EMEA Dimitri Tassiopoulos (2005) Event Management: A Professional and Developmental Approach. Juta and Company Ltd Frank Supovitz (2005) The sports event management and marketing playbook. J. Wiley & Sons Jill Moran CSEP (2007) How to Start a Home-Based Event Planning Business. Globe Pequot Judy Allen (2000) Event Planning : The Ultimate Guide to Successful Meetings, Corporate Events, Fundraising Galas, Conferences, Conventions, Incentives and Other Special Events. Wiley Johnny Allen, William O'Toole, Robert Harris, Ian McDonnell (2008) Festival and Special Event Management. John Wiley & Sons Julia Rutherford Silvers (2003) Professional Event Coordination. Wiley Shannon Kilkenny (2007) The Complete Guide to Successful Event Planning. Atlantic Publishing Company Wagen (2008) Event Management. Pearson Education India Read More