Digital transformation in the event industry. A marketing approach

Abstract

Due to the current global health crisis of Covid-19, the event industry was forced to adopt a virtual model basically overnight. The event industry is changing, and progressing in order to adapt to current trends, and embracing digital transformation with the entire latest tech on display at conferences and meetings. The new technologies available are assisting conference organizers with creating an immersive experience and they are now able to turn attendees into participants by adding an experiential dimension to their events, making a conference or any other event a collaborative occurrence as opposed to a function that people attend just for the purpose of consuming knowledge. The aim of this research is to access physicians’ attitude towards the sudden change of traditional in-person meetings into on-line conference. Additionally, to identify event planners’ viewpoint, to suggest future changes and make recommendations of how to maintain high levels of participation and engagement. Therefore, it will attempt to overview potential solutions offered by both event planners and participants. Furthermore, this study aim to review recent significant developments in meetings and events industry, present the beginning of the digital transformation of the event industry- years before the pandemic of COVID-19, the competitive advantages of on-line events and how professionals can be prepared for future disruptions. The methods utilized for this dissertation are a combination of in-depth interviews to medical event planners and a survey with closed ended questions to physicians who are taking part in medical conferences. Both methods provide an in-depth analysis in order to better understand the motivations attached to the participants’ decisions to continue taking part in on-line conferences. Both physicians and event planners in this study showed mostly satisfaction with this change and ready to continue by completing and perfecting these new methods. While the majority reported fatigue and overwhelmed with the number of conferences, increasing the time for more effective communication could be a solution. The findings and recommendations from this study highlight the importance for further studies to refine all the conference’s tools.