Working with corporate events from Events Tampere´s perspective, the industry has proved to be a competitive business with a lot of individual small and midsized companies offering services that are often very well customized or customizable. As Events Tampere reaches to become an envoy of creating high quality events also outside Tampere Hall, keeping the services and ideas timely and easily available is essential for acquiring customers. For that exact reason this type of research feels important, and it also awakened the author´s own interest to do his part in researching the field.
As a new business division and a small group of industry professionals, Events Tampere has most often acted with Finnish companies, even though some act nationally and internationally. Therefore, customers connected to this research were also of that style, Finnish nationally and internationally working companies. This
shows as a difficulty to make assumptions that would be true with all possible B2B customer´s ideas about the future of corporate event industry. There are also as many company policies and cultures as there are companies, thus the research will have a limited reach and produce hypothetical beliefs about the corporate event future based on the findings.
Theoretically this thesis focuses on corporate events industry, often declared as MICE industry meaning meetings, incentives, conferences, and exhibitions. As Tavicon, the congress and conference team of Events Tampere well knows their established customers and their industry section, it was decided that during this thesis process focus should be on looking into companies that most often organize internal events for their own personnel or events for their associates, partners and customers. This limits the studied field and leaves companies that may have differentiating views and needs considering events outside the research. The limitations made also affect the studied theory and what sources were used as the subject was limited to corporate events.
3 METHODOLOGY
Because of the features and goals of this thesis research, gathering information through qualitative methodology was chosen. Interviewing as a qualitative method offers conversational interaction between the researcher and the respondent, therefore giving the opportunity for increasing understanding and providing in-depth views from the B2B customers thoughts about the studied subject (O’Gorman & MacIntosh 2015, 118-120). This is an important factor as during this thesis process foresights and especially those views are in a major role. The interviews will be semi structured, allowing a free flow of conversation but still having a structure to keep the topic on track. To keep all interviews equal, the questions and arrangement will remain the same for all interviews, creating as little change in the style of interaction as possible.
This is to maintain and to ensure a similar level of contact with all interviewees.
After the interviews, all recordings will be carefully transcribed to make the next phase of analysing clearer. The analysing will continue with thematic analysis. Thematic analysis can be described as a qualitative data analysis method that involves reading through a data set, such as interview or focus group transcriptions, and identifying patterns across the data. (Grant 2019, 48; O’Gorman & MacIntosh 2015 144-146.) This type of analysis was chosen, as the aim for this research is not to find new theories but rather to recognise, examine and then report projections withing the gathered data to make conclusions, and thematic analysis has the freedom to support this aim.
In the end of the analysis, at least six simple but important steps will have been taken to draw conclusions. The process of thematic analysis begins with reading through the transcriptions and really becoming aware of the whole data through vibrantly exploring and marking first. The second step is to configurate preliminary coding across the data. This will make the analysing easier and will also help in the next steps when the process goes further. Third step will be going through the data the second time, now focusing on finding united themes from the coding. (Grant 2019, 48-49;
O’Gorman & MacIntosh 2015, 145.)
Examining the selected themes in relation to one other and the coding’s to further focus themes is the fourth step. In this stage some themes may be more noticeable forming main themes as other would form subthemes. This then allows developing a thematic
“map” to visually express the analysis. Fifth step will be to further define the themes and locating the general narrative for the conclusions. This step, considering the situation, can be done more than once to clarify and form a solid analysis. The sixth, and last, step will be writing the analysis´ conclusions with transparency into a comprehensive report with clear commentary aspects. (Grant 2019, 49; O’Gorman &
MacIntosh 2015, 145.)
4 MANAGING CORPORATE EVENTS
Without a doubt, the event management business has expanded over time. This is because of a rising demand for organizing business meetings, gatherings, conferences, and other related events to facilitate successful group interaction. Because of the regular get-togethers, event trends are significantly greater in active markets.
Nowadays it is almost rare to find a business organization that is not interested in facilitating formal or informal events. As a result, event industry resources are pursued to make personal and professional events a triumph. (Morgan n.d.)
Time, money, staff, skills and other resources may be in limited supply for most organisations considering events, and the ultimate event outcomes can be hard to reach. Current organizational structures, such as a business management hierarchy, that serve an organization effectively on a regular basis may not be appropriate for the non-routine function of planning and operating a unique event.
Professionally, and for those organizations involved in the production of events, there is a need to utilize tactics that will assure an efficient, pleasurable, and safe result.
Often this necessitates a more organized and structured approach than an informal family and friends gathering. (Shone & Parry 2010, 71.)