There is also a growing emphasis being placed on special events by retailers:
They all have a common objective-to generate sales. Special events are expected to attract customer traffic. Thus, customers can be exposed to the merchant the store wants to sell. Because of the growing importance of special eve some retailers have combined the responsibility for special events with public.
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Different types of special retail events are as follows:
1. Merchandising events
Merchandising works on the basis of encasing popularity of events and the core people and items involved in them. A visit a store by a celebrity from the event would be a merchandising event.
This is aimed at increasing the customer traffic at the stores that sells the special items of the event such as T-shirts, teddy bears, dolls, bracelets, caps or any item that becomes popular because of the event. Such merchandising events add to the revenue that an event organizer can earn during and after the actual event.
2. Demonstrations and showings
An event which has a low reach and direct interaction, demonstrations are very useful as part of any event campaign for clients who need to explain the workings and benefits of their products elaborately. Demonstrations such as those given on usage of wigs, kitchen peelers, the slicer etc. are examples of these.
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In fact, tele-shopping companies such as TSN have organised moving vans carrying the innovative items shown on television so that people can touch and feel them before purchasing.
3. Special sales inducements
Reach and interaction that a client desires from an event eventually need to be converted into tangible purchases by the target audience.
Special sales inducement events are right at the cutting edge of this requirement. Two-for-one sales, one-rupee sales, contests and competitions such as slogan writing as well as giveaways such as free samples of merchandise, shopping bags, reusable packaging etc. fall under this type of special events.
In the not too distant past, a major branded jeans showroom in downtown Mumbai had offered buyers of goods above a certain amount extra jeans for just Rupee One with resounding success. The offer of Buy two Cielos and get one Free by Daewoo Motors in mid 1998 is yet another example of special sales inducement events.
4. Film and television based events
Capitalizing on the craze for films, companies are adopting various methods to use this to their advantage. With the advent of satellite television and proliferation of channels, the audience has got so fragmented that sponsoring the screening of a popular movie is a better alternative for addressing an audience that is largely drawn from the target segment of the firm’s product.
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By converting the get-together of stars-from the launch of the shooting of the film (Mahurat) to the promotion of the film after launch and the celebration of completion of various landmark days for the film-into noteworthy special events the sponsoring firm can get good mileage.
Though sponsoring film-based events can be very effective as a promotional tool, it lends a very poor recall rate for the sponsors of most events. A survey conducted put the recall rate for sponsors at 9% for a sponsored premiere of a hit Hindi film Khalnayak as compared to a high of 43% for the sponsors of Miss India viz. Femina.
This can be attributed to the fact that while it is possible to prefix the sponsor’s name and call the event Femina Miss India, it would not be possible to name a film so.
Characteristics of film based events are maximum reach with least interaction. At the same time, events primarily designed for the television medium such as Colgate Gel Boogie Woogie and Close up Antakshari, Bournvita Quiz Contest leverage on exactly this prime branding opportunity for their sponsors.
5. Web-based events
Just a decade back the concept of using the computer for anything beyond just scientific programming was nonexistent. Today, you have Webinars i.e. web based seminars and Web-Casting, i.e. broadcasting on the web of events and live transmission of scoreboards of competitive events via was one of the foremost sites to launch a live scoreboard for cricket on-line targeting the millions of Indian Cricket aficionados.
These web-based events and Internet-friendly event information with details are targeted towards bringing interactivity over the web to the net-savvy target audience.
America on Line (AOL.com) is very active in arranging exclusive live web events ranging from shows featuring Madonna as a guest, to a live coverage of the Olympics and the Presidential elections campaign events.
On these live events, AOL subscribers, which are the target audience here, get to watch questions and answers unfold in real time, submit questions to the guest, chat with other audience members, review the schedule of upcoming chats and events as well as read transcripts of thousands of previous chats and events.