Cycling Summer 2013 – Raising Funds with an Experien-tial Marketing Event
Kähkönen, Laura; Ahvenainen, Sini-Maaria (2015)
Haaga-Helia ammattikorkeakoulu
2015
All rights reserved
Julkaisun pysyvä osoite on
https://urn.fi/URN:NBN:fi:amk-201505249799
https://urn.fi/URN:NBN:fi:amk-201505249799
Tiivistelmä
Adventure, long-haul journey, sport and charity tourism have become more and more popular ways of seeing the world. People want unique experiences and are constantly looking for self-fulfillment, self-discovery and excitement. Eco travel, adventures and charity are current topics not only in the field of tourism and hospitality but also in everyday life all around the world.
With this project-based bachelor’s thesis, we focused on a current topic of charity by imple-menting an experiential fundraising event. Understanding the characteristics and statistics of people giving and communicating with the event’s followers are necessary aspects of raising awareness for a charity and a specific cause. This thesis concentrates on the theory of fund-raising and marketing communications related to experiential events and the implementation of it in our Cycling Summer 2013 –project.
Cycling Summer 2013 started with the process of brainstorming and planning in December 2012, having approximately half a year to do the preparations and embark on the journey on May 24th 2013. The cycling itself lasted 56 days, after which we took about a year’s break before starting to transform the experience into paper. We had to change perspectives during the process, which led to quite short timeframe for finishing our thesis.
The initial goal of this thesis was to raise money for UNICEF- charity organization with an experiential marketing event, cycling from San Francisco to New York in 56 days. Further the aim of the paper is to give a better understanding of actions to consider when organizing any kind of an experiential fundraising event.
Experiantial marketing is a new way for brands to increase their awereness and affect con-sumer loyalty. As competition in service and goods industry is rising, brands need to come up with new ways to market themselves. With experiential marketing, consumers’ purchase de-cision can be affected by providing meaningful and emotional experiences ultimately creating a connection between the consumer and the brand.
As the results of this thesis indicate, charity event is not the most profitable way to raise funds, but it gives a competitive advantage for the organization to affect consumers’ minds emotianally thus creating awareness of the cause and increasing their knowledge as far as to get into their liking.
For future projects, a short list of advice is provided in the final chapter of this paper. These are issues that we see as potential topics for improvement based on our own experience.
With this project-based bachelor’s thesis, we focused on a current topic of charity by imple-menting an experiential fundraising event. Understanding the characteristics and statistics of people giving and communicating with the event’s followers are necessary aspects of raising awareness for a charity and a specific cause. This thesis concentrates on the theory of fund-raising and marketing communications related to experiential events and the implementation of it in our Cycling Summer 2013 –project.
Cycling Summer 2013 started with the process of brainstorming and planning in December 2012, having approximately half a year to do the preparations and embark on the journey on May 24th 2013. The cycling itself lasted 56 days, after which we took about a year’s break before starting to transform the experience into paper. We had to change perspectives during the process, which led to quite short timeframe for finishing our thesis.
The initial goal of this thesis was to raise money for UNICEF- charity organization with an experiential marketing event, cycling from San Francisco to New York in 56 days. Further the aim of the paper is to give a better understanding of actions to consider when organizing any kind of an experiential fundraising event.
Experiantial marketing is a new way for brands to increase their awereness and affect con-sumer loyalty. As competition in service and goods industry is rising, brands need to come up with new ways to market themselves. With experiential marketing, consumers’ purchase de-cision can be affected by providing meaningful and emotional experiences ultimately creating a connection between the consumer and the brand.
As the results of this thesis indicate, charity event is not the most profitable way to raise funds, but it gives a competitive advantage for the organization to affect consumers’ minds emotianally thus creating awareness of the cause and increasing their knowledge as far as to get into their liking.
For future projects, a short list of advice is provided in the final chapter of this paper. These are issues that we see as potential topics for improvement based on our own experience.