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This chapter discusses emerging issues in event management with a focus on small-scale events. The author reflects on managerial approaches to stakeholder involvement and engagement, and underlines the complexity of strategy formulation for destination development planning. This contribution also provides advanced conceptual instruments for event marketing as guiding principles that permeate destination-marketing strategies. In addition, the author investigates the role and nature of sponsorship linked to enhancing the value of small-scale events and highlights fundamental issues in developing a marketing management model for place marketing and the key drivers of event management strategies involving sponsors and event participants.

This paper aims to explore the best practices in marketing strategies for the Malaysian business event industry.

A qualitative methodology was adopted to collect primary data from semi-structured interviews. The informants included ten experts from the Malaysian business event industry. The data collected were then grouped using the ATLAS.ti (v.8) software for thematic analysis. A trustworthiness assessment was applied to increase the credibility and ensure the rigour of the qualitative findings.

The qualitative results revealed the following final themes: event marketing, the marketing plan, the 7 Ps of the marketing mix, strength, weaknesses, opportunities and threats (SWOT) analysis and traditional and digital marketing. Interestingly, three inductive themes were also emerged as follows: relationship marketing, unique selling points (USPs) and key opinion leaders.

This study looked at Malaysian business events and focused only on findings from the industry expert's perspective. In the future, further investigation may concentrate on other business event industry players such as destination marketing companies, airline operators, travel intermediaries, clients, suppliers, universities and the government.

The findings offer a holistic approach to increase Malaysia's competitiveness among other primary business event host destinations in the Asian-Pacific, improve its worldwide and Asian-Pacific rankings and better position the country as a preferred business event destination during the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic.

This is the first such study to date, which has never been explored in qualitative academic research. This study has substantial implications for various business event industry stakeholders in Malaysia.

This research investigates the impacts of movie consumers' willingness, measured by the number of people who want to watch a movie, on the relationship between event marketing and box office revenue. This study aims to provide marketers with practical event marketing strategies and tactics to improve box office revenue.

Panel data was collected for 1,141 movies released in China from year 2014–2018 for a total of 12 weeks, spanning 4 weeks before and 8 weeks after release. The mediating effect of consumers' willingness on the relationship between event marketing and box office revenue was tested through a stepwise method and the generalized least squares method based on random effects.

Movie consumers' willingness mediates the effect of event marketing and box office revenue. Both movie consumers' willingness and box office revenue follow an inverted U-shaped distribution against the intensity of event marketing. From the second week before release to the first week after release, intensified event marketing enhances box office revenue. Various types and intensities of event marketing should be employed in different periods of time to increase the total box office revenue.

This research ignores the costs of various types of event marketing for different movies. Future research could consider the cost-effectiveness of event marketing.

The findings of this paper provide meaningful insights on event marketing strategies for practitioners.

This study contributes to the field by verifying movie consumers' willingness as a mediator between event marketing and box office revenue. The study also provides empirical evidences on effective types and reasonable intensities of event marketing over the whole lifecycle of movies.

The paper aims to introduce a framework within which to interpret and manage organisational events that have marketing significance. It also seeks to introduce associated concepts to further this area of study and practice.

The paper introduces and appraises the marketing event landscape and goes on to examine the unique DNA of marketing events evaluating their specific relevance and role in the contemporary marketing environment. The final section of the paper explores a range of strategic event objectives as the starting point for event design, delivery, and evaluation. Couched between the author's previous and future (ongoing) empirical work in this area, this article provides much needed conceptual development.

The framework provides a structured approach through which practitioners and academics can interpret and realise the value of marketing events. The discussion demonstrates that there exists a wide and rich array of organisational events that have marketing utility, marketing events is therefore an inclusive term. Underpinning the framework, and associated discussion, is how the marketing events feed into a wider marketing strategy. The connection between event objectives and marketing strategy is therefore pivotal, and is a prevailing theme of the paper.

The paper demonstrates how the inherent qualities of marketing events are very relevant given the contemporary marketing environment. Despite this, there is a lack of academic literature and events remain a poor relation to other forms of marketing communication. This detracts from them realising their potential as a relevant and high impact marketing delivery method. The models, concepts, and ideas in this paper are original, inspired by a range of fragmented literature relevant to the topic of marketing and events.

The purpose of this paper is to comprehensively characterise the interdisciplinary phenomenon of ambush marketing in sports, structure its manifestations, illustrate the consequences associated with ambush marketing and provide a critical evaluation from an objective perspective.

Various approaches to the definition of ambush marketing are presented and the objectives pursued with ambush marketing are identified. In this paper a new approach has been developed to structure the strategies and manifestations of ambush marketing.

It is a fine line between creative marketing and infringing on sponsorship rights. So the interdisciplinary phenomenon ambush marketing is discussed controversially. Ambush marketing is situated at the intersection of two opposing spheres of interest conducting a battle for shares of the marketing potential of a sports event. On one side there is the disparaging view of ambush marketing founded on legal and/or ethical considerations. On the other, the author has the respectful assessment of ambushers characterised by their innovative, creative marketing.

The analysis conducted in this paper leads to the conclusion that a general evaluation or condemnation of ambush marketing is not feasible. A four-field matrix emerges from the combination of a legal-statutory consideration on one hand and an ethical-moral assessment on the other.

The paper describes and structures ambush marketing in a novel form and discusses illustrating examples from major sporting events. Ambush marketing is evaluated from a neutral perspective by summarising the opportunities and threats of ambush marketing which leads to a nuanced contemplation of ambush marketing.

The purpose of this study is threefold. The first is to discuss the practice of corporate hospitality (CH) at special events used by Australian businesses as a relationship marketing technique to engage with their customers. The second aim is to investigate how marketing practitioners judge their CH programmes in a business-to-business (B2B) context. A third aim is to determine the key benefits and uncover contemporary issues faced by marketing practitioners in the operation of CH programmes.

A qualitative method was employed in this the first phase of a broader research programme. The research design sought to attain exploratory insights from marketing executives that employed CH at sports and cultural events as part of existing B2B marketing programmes. The intention of this qualitative study was to investigate and uncover key issues and establish themes that could be tested in future research. Fifteen in depth interviews including a pilot of two interviews were conducted with marketing practitioners who held managerial responsibility for CH programmes in four states of Australia. These interviews were electronically recorded and subsequently transcribed for coding purposes.

An analysis identified several key issues regarding the role and deployment of CH within marketing programmes. Key benefits of programmes included gaining market intelligence, improving channel communication and creating a competitive advantage through building existing relationships with a firm's customers. The research found that there were specific differences within both the application and management of CH among practitioners and highlighted several pressing issues regarding the practice. Events offering mass appeal to both genders such as tennis and horse racing were considered more appealing to a corporate audience and spectacular, big-ticket events were favoured. The research identified that no two organisations operate their programmes identically, some use the programmes to reward past loyalty and others leverage special events for face-to-face time with new clients. The lack of consistency in measurement included an inability to disengage CH programmes from other marketing elements operating simultaneously. It was evident that the lack of objective setting by many organisations coupled with often a short-term view of CH programmes impeded effective measurement of expected outcomes.

This exploratory study provides greater insights into the little researched topic of CH in the special events sector. Implications stemming from the study include the implementation of recommended changes to CH design and delivery including optimising special event selection to match intended guests and their preferences, setting micro and macro objectives for CH programmes and ensuring they are measurable. In addition, such objectives need to be made explicit to internal stakeholders in order to maximise return on investment for marketing practitioners. For CH to continue to grow as a major revenue stream for special event organisers, more certainty with regards to the outcomes of these programmes are required, along with ensuring the CH special event products offer corporate appeal.

This paper examines ambush marketing activities and their effects upon UK football-oriented consumers. It questions previous definitions of ambush marketing and proposes one more relevant for today. The research focuses upon the identification of 'event-connected brand recognition' achieved by sponsor versus ambush brands and the role of 'event involvement' as a driver of this. The research employs a pre- and post-event design that aims to track consumer recognition of predesignated brands. Results give initial indications that consumers can discern differences between the two forms of activity and that high event involvement increases recognition. This paper contributes towards the debate about a change in the definition of ambush marketing against the backdrop of increasing media saturation surrounding major sporting events, and suggests that a more relevant descriptor would be 'parallel event marketing'.

This study aims to explore how brands use brand personification techniques in real-time marketing on social media, particularly Twitter, and examine how these techniques impact consumer engagement, moderated by brand-event congruence levels.

Data included 464 tweets posted by 95 brands around three large events in 2019. The types of brand personification techniques and the level of brand-event congruence applied by the tweets were content-analyzed, and regression analyses were conducted to examine their linkages to consumer engagement metrics.

Results confirmed the use of diverse personification techniques in brands’ real-time marketing tweets as in the previous literature. The study also revealed a new personification technique, tacit expression, not reported in previous literature. The study also showed that the overall effectiveness of multimedia-based (vs caption-based) personification techniques in increasing consumer engagement on social media was greater, but their relative effectiveness varied depending on whether or not the event was functionally congruent with the brand.

The findings offer valuable suggestions to brand managers regarding prioritizing brand personification techniques and aligning brands’ social media marketing with real-time events to maximize the effectiveness of real-time marketing in boosting consumer engagement.

This research offers insights into the dynamic effects of different brand personification techniques in the new context of real-time marketing, extending the scope of literature on brand personification and anthropomorphism. The revelation of a new type of brand personification not captured in the extant literature is also a significant contribution.

Given the strong interest among services marketing practitioners in sponsoring events, this study illustrates how events and sponsorships synergistically facilitate and deepen consumer relationships by connecting service brands with consumers' passions. Structural equation modeling is used to test a congruity theory-based framework via a field study conducted at a professional cycling event. The tested model holds for two service brands operating at different levels of sponsorship. The results demonstrate how the combination of consumers' attitudes toward the event, knowledge of the sponsor brand and their level of activity in the event domain influence their assessments of event-sponsor fit. Interestingly, the findings indicate that, in the context of a community-based sports event, the title sponsor did not experience any discernable advantage of sponsorship, despite its elevated position as a sponsor and higher brand equity.

Events are social, sporty, cultural, economic and environmental or entertainment-based. They are held on specific dates and times to share common experiences. Event tourism is becoming more and more important, bringing many benefits to the destinations. National and international events are organised to create alternative tourism products, increase the number of visitors, contribute to economic development and create competitive advantage, improve the infrastructure of the destination, increase the quality of life and provide socio-cultural development support. Direct or indirect communication is important for the target audience. Today, event organisers, who want to establish strong ties with the target audience, benefit from technology as it helps to promote the event and motivate people to participate in it. Along with the development of the Internet and the social media, communication and marketing implementations have also changed. High-budgeted events are becoming an important segment of tourism. The development of technology and widespread use of the Internet and social media have added a creative and indispensable competitive element to event marketing communication.