Change in business events’ consumer trends due to the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic.
Romanovska, Evelina (2021)
2021
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Julkaisun pysyvä osoite on
https://urn.fi/URN:NBN:fi:amk-2021122090137
https://urn.fi/URN:NBN:fi:amk-2021122090137
Tiivistelmä
The SARS-CoV-2 pandemic affected ticket purchasing trends both offline and online in a negative way worldwide. How people attend events has changed, and businesses need to adapt a swift transition to post-covid event trends. This thesis aims to understand and identify the current business event trends, when it comes to participants’ needs.
The theoretical framework consists of consumer theories, and trends that are being borrowed into the business conventions for entertainment purposes. The thesis explored factors affecting ticket purchasing behaviour. In addition, the gamification trends were explored, how the supporting community within gaming industry can affect audience participation behavior if applied and adapted into the business events.
Qualitative data collection method was chosen as it can provide detailed, rich data via interviews. The target participants were company leaders and decision-makers of various fields from Finland and Hungary. Thematic analysis method was chosen to analyse the data collected. In total 11 interviews were conducted through Zoom and Teams sessions which were recorded. The participants were asked questions about three topics which were ticket-purchasing, health safety, and their event experience.
The results have showed lower attendance rates and ticket purchasing during the covid-19 pandemic, although not all of the data could be attributed to that reason. The health safety concerned most of the participants, even though all of the participants expect the event health safety restrictions to cease within a few years. Some participants consciously avoided business events if the restrictions were present. Additionally, many participants expressed ideas that could improve the quality of business conventions, with a focus on the virtual events. Those ideas would require separate testing to know how that would affect customer satisfaction and ticket-sales rates. The majority expressed an interest towards attending events with virtual reality programme, to explore how it can work in the current technology level. The majority expressed that it could improve the social limitations of online meetings and seminars.
The thesis project was started in spring 2021 and concluded in November 2021.
The theoretical framework consists of consumer theories, and trends that are being borrowed into the business conventions for entertainment purposes. The thesis explored factors affecting ticket purchasing behaviour. In addition, the gamification trends were explored, how the supporting community within gaming industry can affect audience participation behavior if applied and adapted into the business events.
Qualitative data collection method was chosen as it can provide detailed, rich data via interviews. The target participants were company leaders and decision-makers of various fields from Finland and Hungary. Thematic analysis method was chosen to analyse the data collected. In total 11 interviews were conducted through Zoom and Teams sessions which were recorded. The participants were asked questions about three topics which were ticket-purchasing, health safety, and their event experience.
The results have showed lower attendance rates and ticket purchasing during the covid-19 pandemic, although not all of the data could be attributed to that reason. The health safety concerned most of the participants, even though all of the participants expect the event health safety restrictions to cease within a few years. Some participants consciously avoided business events if the restrictions were present. Additionally, many participants expressed ideas that could improve the quality of business conventions, with a focus on the virtual events. Those ideas would require separate testing to know how that would affect customer satisfaction and ticket-sales rates. The majority expressed an interest towards attending events with virtual reality programme, to explore how it can work in the current technology level. The majority expressed that it could improve the social limitations of online meetings and seminars.
The thesis project was started in spring 2021 and concluded in November 2021.