2.1 Product
t T-shirt and bag near the entrance. These products are targeted to those bear enthusiasts and collectors, some potential customer will be the children as teddy bear are kind of toys in children’s world and the youngster especially girls are crazy about collecting delightful soft sculpture. A variety of teddy bear artists came from different parts of the world provide wide range of choice in teddy bear and even the limited edition Teddy showed up, fulfilling the needs of the targeted group and potential customers as the show is rare and unique. 
product which is the event experience using their senses to make their experience more fulfilling. Firstly, the artistic design of the building fulfills the visitors’ sensory experience. On the other hand, the service products delivered by the artists shaped the visitors’ perception when visitors interact with the artists in the event as the visitor perception is formed by the service quality received in the process of delivering goods and service. 
ational award-winning artists who had been came through numerous show and taken part in international competitions all over the world, they are confident as they are very familiar with their products and able to offer clear understanding on the teddy making to satisfy the curiosity and desire of the visitors there. In this case, they are quite successful as they are able to convince the visitors and establish trust with them. This will eventually make the process of selling their products effortless as they form a good perception among the visitors.2.2 Place
The venue of t
he event plays an important part in fulfilling the needs of the visitors, the physical location of the event will determine whether it is ideal location from the aspects of cleanliness, easy parking, provision of facilities. The visitors will make a decision whether they will come and visit based on these aspects.
As such, this event is organized in the Arts House at the Old Parliament within walking distance from City Hall MRT. This is considered relatively accessible even for the tourists who came to visit this event as it is nearby the MRT which serves as main transport for the tourists. The parking lots for cars are sufficient even though it is 
taken place on weekends, this will save the visitors’ time in searching for parking space which will in turn affect their enjoyment. As the Old Parliament is a historical building, it matched the theme of the event which is an art form. . The interior and surroundings of The Arts House hold an air of prestige, impressing the first time visitors. A set of lushly carpeted staircase guides the visitors to get to the second level where the Gallery of The Arts House is located.
Inside the Arts House, the show room is nicely decorated to match the feeling and atmosphere of arts, together with the graceful music to enhance the ambience there. This has contributed to the enjoyment of visitors while walking around in the show room.
However, the show room is hardly to accommodate the crowd especially during the weekends. It became stuffy as more and more people coming into the show room, visitors found it hard to roam around freely. The enjoyment of visitors was affected and some of them left instead before they could actually look around. This situation caused the loss of potential customers for the exhibitors.
Suggestions for improvement:
- Provide ample space at the access points and through circular movement corridors as a way to control crowd.
- Try to disperse the vital services such as guides to explain the event over the site so that the visitors felt that they are entertained and concerned as they often require assistance to get clearer picture of the event.
2.3 Price
Price can be key influence on event demand, therefore the size of the potential visitors who will come to visit the event and the selected event venue will need to be considered when pricing for an event. It doesn’t guarantee that people will come for an event even if it is free admission. The t
eddy bear show is free admission as it is a non-profit event with the aim of showcasing the authentic designs of the teddy bears by well known artists. However, it does impose a price on the visitors in term of time, travel costs or lost opportunities which the visitors would otherwise spend it elsewhere.
As the production of event involves various costs, these costs must be covered by some means other than an admission fee. The high selling prices for the teddy bear of artists and teddy bear making fabrics usually include the admission to the event, vendor rentals and merchandise to cover their costs. Nevertheless, the high price can project the quality or “value for money” to the potential customers and influence their purchasing decisions. The quality and brand name of teddy bear from the hands of talented artists are in line with the high selling prices set up, those bear enthusiasts may think what they bought worthwhile but from the perspective of the youngster who are mostly students, they can’t afford to purchase the high price teddy bear and will probably turn to the merchandise such as design print T-shirt and bags. However, for charity purpose, part of the sales proceeds from the artists will be donating to The Business Times Budding Artists Fund, to help support art education at The Little Arts Academy for disadvantaged children.
2.4 Promotions (Communications)
Intense and short term pre-event publicity is essential to achieve early awareness and ensure a peaking of demand before the event has taken place. Some communications tools to publicize the event include advertising, public relations and sales promotions. Image building for the event will help to reach out potential customers and establish relationship.
For this event, the organizer approached PR company, Betty Yeoh, on creating awareness of this teddy bear show a
mong the public mainly through advertising via online media and those media publications, together with their professions to achieve their goal of generating substantial coverage and image enhancement. The media publication strategy has been used successfully in publicizing the event, this can be shown through full-page advertisement in The Straits Times for several days and being listed under events for 8Days magazines.
Flyers were given out to notify the public about this event, this method is commonly used as it is cheap, easy to distribute and able to convey information in easy to read format. Furthermore, the ads had been set up through internet and the related webpage was advertised by linking it to the popular website, http://www.visitsingapore.com/. to spread the awareness and providing detailed information about the event such as date, time, venue, activities. In addition, eye-catching photographs are included to whoever visits the website, reaching out to the potential customers from different parts of the world.
The popularity of award winning artist, Issac Kong able to draw the crowd to the event as he was once featured in an entire article under Life! The Straits Times on the 9th November 2008. On the whole, various communication tools have been effectively practiced in promoting this event.
Suggestions for improvement:
- Other forms of communications tool such as direct mail can be employed for those potential visitors in the databases to grab any possible opportunity to better reach out to them. It can be essential to maintain good public relation with the host community for the long term development of the event.
- As internet has been widely used as marketing in most industry, increasing the sophistication in the use of internet capabilities will result in greater innovation and possibly unexpected opportunities for marketing.
2.5 Programming
In an event, programming is an important marketing decision in order to generate targeted benefits to the visitors with attractive and unique programs. In this aspect, a v
ariety of the programs has been offered under this event to match the theme of this event. There are teddy bear exhibition, merchandise sales of related products as well as the demonstration of teddy bear making, providing the visitors different experiences at the same time to maximize their enjoyment by visiting this event. All the teddy bear showcasing in the exhibition are from the hands of well known artists, also the artist who demonstrates teddy making is one of the acclaimed sculpture artists.
There is no doubt about the quality of the products and their professions. The elements of style employed in this event were excellence of artistic expression and fashion which were both mutually exclusive. These elements went into the creation of event experience in order to pursue the excellence and quality of the event, besides catering their preferences in leisure. On the other visitors can roam around and explore the event place on their free will, they can choose to watch the demonstration of teddy bear making or not to. No restriction or rules for them to follow. Hence, the whole range of well organized and unique programs with excellent quality will shape the visitors’ experience and entertain them in different dimensions. This will ultimately encourage them to make their future visits to the next similar event.
2.6 Partnership
In order to achieve their common marketing goals, Positive Solutions Pte Ltd was one of the organizers in this event which is a leading independent retail IT systems provider other than Moob International. As Positive Solutions Pte Ltd comprises a dedicated team of in-house professionals in IT industry, this has contributed to the quality of the event as well as establishing good image and reputation of the company by practicing excellent standard of performance in their professions. The Arts House acted as their venue partner to enhance the historical value of this building with this art form event and to publicize the site as ideal event venue to other potential exhibitors for the next event. Furthermore, the artists in the event has donated part of their sale proceeds to help support art education for the disadvantaged children through the collaboration with The Little Arts Academy. They are sponsors who contribute to the charity funds which will in turn bring them good image to the public.
Suggestions for improvement:
- Invite those important suppliers such as those companies providing food and beverages service or decorations for venue to become long term partners with the event organizations, the selected company’s goodwill and reputation should be take into consideration.
2.7 Packaging and Distribution
Event itself is considered packages of activities, venue and experience that cannot otherwise be enjoyed. The key to create attractive packages is to combine the components that otherwise are difficult to obtain and enjoy. In this event, most of the products such as teddy bear, making fabrics, designed T-shirts and bags were sold separately. However, there is extra valu
e offered in the sale of STEIFF Japan Teddy as they are to be sold to the first 20 customers at special price which far cheaper than retail price despite their world renowned brand. This appeared to be the unique selling point as a value added-package and created guaranteed benefits for the purchase. However, the distribution mix has not been maximized to take advantage in this event as the distribution network can have considerable impact on event packages.
Suggestion for improvement:
- To take advantage of the packaging mix, other benefits such as discount vouchers for nearby restaurant can be bundled with the physical products in the event to make it more attractive to the potential customers.
- Improving the distribution network to promote the packages by collaborating with intermediaries to include the event visit in the tour packages as this could be prospective market to target.
2.8 People
Under this marketing mix in this event, the communication and interaction between the exhibitors, service staff and the customers are critical in constituting part of the event experience. The customers are valuable assets to the event, without which the even
t cannot be taken place. Therefore, in this event, each contact point between customers and the artists will directly form their experience and influence their decision to purchase or for next visit. The artists in the event are friendly and approachable to entertain every single customer. They welcomed any questions regarding their profession to share their knowledge and interest with 
whoever is interested.
When I approached one of the artists and ask her permission for raising some questions, she entertained me with cheerful smile and appeared to be attentive to address my questions. She offered me her name card and agreed to take photo with me, I felt that her hospitality left me with great contentment and enrich my experience. Due to the constant big crowd, the artists could not manage to entertain all the visitors, part of the visitors didn’t get the chance to raise questions, thus reducing their enjoyment in the event.
Suggestion for improvement:
A short Q&A session for each respective artist can be held to maximize the visitors’ enjoyment and minimize the crowd at the same time. - As noticed, family market comprises big part of the visitors, and children require great concerns. Having a teddy bear mascot to walk around and entertain the children by taking photographs with them will be greatly appreciated to improve the interaction with children.
3. THE TOURISM ROLES AND ECONOMIC VALUE OF THE EVENT
3.1 The tourism roles
As people become more demanding and sophisticated in special event tourism, their growing potential in gaining popularity cannot be denied. This rapid growing market provides a knock-on effect in term of extended length of stays and travelling itineraries.
First and foremost, the tourism revenue generated by an event can be significant as they come from several sources that the visitors are likely to spend money on, for instance travel, accommodation, goods and service in the host city other than their spending in the event.
In this case, there are world-renowned, award-winning teddy bear artists from different parts of the world such as USA, New Zealand, Japan as well as Singapore to get together in this event to display their signature creations. This has drawn foreign teddy bear collectors and hobbyists to travel from their respective countries to visit this extraordinary event in Singapore, in turn generating tourist expenditure which helps to circulate the local economy. Therefore, collaboration with intermediaries should be cultivated to package this event with other tourist attraction as this will effectively promote the event and extend their length of stay in the host city. As this teddy show has come to its second year in Singapore with aggressive media coverage and expose, it has successfully enhanced the profile of Singapore, resulting in improved long term tourism image and visitation to this event.
3.2 The economic value
By stimulating this teddy bear show, the expenditure on the event can have a positive effect on employment as job opportunities are created in the event-related industry as well as those supporting businesses such as event planning company and F&B suppliers. This because when this teddy bear show was organized, various shareholders in different professions are required to contribute to the success of holding event, therefore these job opportunities are supported in the community as a result of visitor expenditure. This event manages to deliver economic benefits through the promotion of tourism, increased visitor expenditure and job creation, leading to more sustainable economy growth.
CONCLUSION
In a nutshell, , there are eight components of marketing mix namely product, place, price, promotion, programming, partnership, packaging and distribution as well as people which are known as 8P’s in marketing events including experiential and facilitating components.These are applied to this teddy bear show by using various examples to support as evidences.
Firstly, the product mix is well employed as they provide both quality physical and intangible products. The place component can be better improved in space to accommodate more visitors while the price component in this event not only to cover cost and generate revenue, but also acts as charity tool to help in art education for disadvantaged children. Promotion component has effectively achieved its goal in raising awareness and increasing publicity of the event. On the other hand, the event has taken advantage in programming components by attracting visitors with various programs in different dimensions.
There is still room for improvement for the event in partnership component as the organizer should pay more concerns in selecting partner who will bring extra publicity and benefits to the event. Besides, the packaging component is not well adopted as improving distribution network can be effective with attractive packages. Last but not least, people component has considerable impact in the success of event as they are integral part of event experience that focuses on the interaction between people. As a whole, the various marketing mix adopted in this event has achieved above average degree of effectiveness that contributes to the success of the event to encourage repeat visit to the next event.
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