Stand Up Comedy Event Management

BUSSINESS MANAGEMENT REPORT

Contents                                            

                                      pages

1. Introduction…………………………………………………..page 3
2. Marking……………………………………………………….page 3-7
3. Human Resources…………………………………………..page 7-9
4. Finance……………………………………………………….page10-12
5. References……………………………………………………page13-15
6. Appendixes……………………………………………………page15-16

INDRODUCTION

This business report contain the cost plan, the marketing strategy and the HR requirement for a stand-up comedy night event which is to be hosted at the Metro Bar, Luton Campus, University of Bedfordshire. All the information in this report has been planned, researched, and organise by a group of student of the University of Bedfordshire. The event aims and objective are to Increase awareness of the Metro bar, tradition, culture, special interest groups, increased community participation, Introducing new and challenging ideas expanding cultural perspectives. The event was planned with the help of a Gantt chart, all tasks were divided among the group members according to their strength in the various requirement of the event planning. (See Appendix 1)

MARKETING
 

“Marketing is the management process responsible for identifying, anticipating and satisfying customer requirements profitably” (Chartered Institute of Marketing, 2008). Marketing is the assortment and investigation of data that helps companies sell products. This info helps companies make new products or change current ones, set prices, choose distribution channels and create a brand or image in the marketplace. The data companies use in marketing comprise customer demographics, sales numbers, information on competitors and industry statistics.There are as many marketing theories as there are products and services. None work for every product in every situation.Several marketing theories have stood the test of time and form a solid foundation on which to build a marketing strategy. The combination of the product, place, price and promotion is known as marketing mix.

Marketing Mix of the Event

The marketing mix can be define as a set of actions, or tactics, that a corporation uses to promote its brand or product in the market. The 4Ps make up a typical marketing mix – Price, Product, Promotion and Place. With these four Ps, marketers explore to distinguish the best product, at the best price, where the best location to sell it also where is and when to promote it or sell it. However, nowadays, the marketing mix increasingly includes several other Ps like Packaging, Positioning, People and even Politics as vital mix elements. The marketing strategy chosen for the event are as follows:

1. Product

Product means the goods-and-services combination the company offers to the target market. Kotler and Armstrong (2010).Products can be touchable which are physical items as well as intangible like services. The product for the event is a service which descend under amusement with the theme “stand-up comedy Night”. The targeted spectators for the event are students and staff of the University of Bedfordshire aged 18 and above due to the location of the venue which is only accessible by students and staff of the University and due to the fact that alcoholic drinks are served at the venue.

2. Place

Place includes company activities that make the product available to target consumers. Kotler and Armstrong (2010). The event will be taking place at Metro Bar & Kitchen which is located at: Campus Centre University Square, Luton LU1 3JU. The reason for which the marketing team have chosen this particular venue is due to the fact that it is an emblem for the student community who likes to party and have a good time. The venue has a capacity of 200 people, and can be hired out for £300. The venue hire come with free 2 SIA licensed security staff, use of in-house sound system, furniture (tables and chairs) bar staff who will run the bar and a duty manager of the bar to operate the event. Metro bar has all the obligatory license to sell alcohol and license to host parties and events.

3. Price

Price is the amount the consumer must exchange to receive the offering .Solomon et al (2009). The price the potential participants will be paying to attend the event is £11 which includes one free drink. The pricing of the tickets was done based on the affordability of the target audience and also after comparing other prices in the same sort of activity.

4. Promotion

Promotion includes all of the activities marketers undertake to inform consumers about their products and to encourage potential customers to buy these products. Solomon et al (2009). Promotion comprises of diverse components such as: sales organisation, public relation (press releases, exhibition conferences and events), advertising (introducing a product through television, print media, social media etc.) and sales promotion. The event will be promote by using different type of promotion such as:

• Advertising: The event will be advertised through the University of Bedfordshire student union website (BEDS SU). Tickets will be designed by the organiser at no cost. Social Media Advertising (SMA) will be also used to promote this event.  The marketing team chose this advertising strategy because Social media users tend to be highly engaged. Taking into consideration this website: (blog.bufferapp.com) facebook is the biggest social media platform around the globe with more than 2 billion active monthly users. So the event will be advertise through Facebook where it cost £35 a week and the event will be advertised on it for a week. Due to the fact that it’s the most used social media platform and large percentage of students and teenagers use it.

• Digital Printed Media Advertising: DPMA is the second way the event is going to be promoted. The choice to use this strategy is due to a variety of reasons.

It can reach the target audience, Since Fitzroy court is next to Metro Bar & Kitchen it is easy to reach many students, whom living in the accommodation might be interested in participating, as most dorm students would go quite often in Metro anyway. Provide a great platform to promote special events and reach the audience in many ways including:

• Door to door mail drop
• Distributing in the accommodation Fitzroy, Wenlock and Lea Halls
• Street distribution (Vicarage Street, Park Street, in front of the university)

• Sales promotion: sale promotion of our event consist of the tickets sales where they will be sold on Facebook and on the metro bar website which will cost £35 for one week-

5. People

 All human actors who play a part in service delivery and thus influence the buyers’ perceptions; namely, the firm’s personnel, the customer, and other customers in the service environment. Zeithaml et al (2008). In terms of the event, people are those who will be running the event and they are as follow:

• Bartenders,
• Duty manager
• Event organiser
• 2 security guards
• Comedian
• Cleaners
• 3 Promoters(outdoor promoters and online)
• 2 hostess

6. Physical evidence

The environment in which the service is delivered, and where the firm and customer interact, and any tangible components that facilitate performance or communication of the service. Zeithaml et al (2008). The physical evidence of our event consist in the ambience, the furniture of the metro bar and the flyers

HUMAN RESOURCES

Human resources is used to describe both the people who work for a company or organization and the department responsible for managing resources related to employees. The term human resources was first coined in the 1960s when the value of labour relations began to garner attention and when notions such as motivation, organizational behaviour, and selection assessments began to take shape. Human resource management is a contemporary, umbrella term used to describe the management and development of employees in an organization.(humanresourcesedu.org) Human resource management is therefore focused on a number of major areas, including:

      Recruiting

Recruitment is the process of actively seeking out, finding and hiring candidate for a precise position or job.To start, a company normally outlines what the job or position entails and creates a profile of the ideal candidate. The company must then attract the candidate through advertisement or the use of recruitment software. Applicants are screened and interviewed by prearranged criteria. When the ideal candidate is chosen, they are hired and integrated into the workplace, and the recruitment process is complete. Companies often place a high value on recruitment, meaning they devote the appropriate time and resources to the process.

      Compensation

Compensation is a methodical approach to providing monetary value to employees in exchange for work performed. Compensation may achieve several purposes assisting in recruitment, job performance, and job satisfaction. In this event apart from the comedian and the internal staffs Compensation will be perceived according to the national minimum wages in UK.

      Employee relations

According to Armstrong (2003), employee relations consist of all those areas of human resource management that deals with workers straight and through collective agreements where trade unions are recognised. The combination practices for the welfare and good functioning condition of the employees. Employee relations are concerned with generally overseeing the relationship between employer and employees at the workplace that can be formal e.g. contract of employment or procedural agreement. The importance of the employee relations is to encourage good organizational climate, mutual understanding and cooperation.There are three main perspectives of employee relations: the Unitary, the pluralist and the Marxist perspective

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      The unitary theory; According to the unitary theory, the employment relationship should be harmonious. That is the employer and employees should work together to achieve the success and where there is no conflict. “The organisation exists in perfect harmony and all conflict, not only industrial relation conflict is both unnecessary and exceptional.” (Salmon 1992)

      The pluralist theory; This perspective assumes that employing organization are made up of individuals and groups with different interest, values and objectives; thus various interest and objective of one group are likely to conflict with those of others (Leat 2001). The pluralist accepts conflict in groups or organisations. 

      The Marxist theory; According to Karl Marx, the society is made up of two conflicting classes: the first class is the capitalists which is referred to the employer and the second class is the employees who sell their labour to the capitalists. In simpler term the employers are powerful (bourgeoisie) and the employees are weak (proletariat).

In hosting the event there will be need for some staff who will contribute in the running of the event,Initial employment for staff was made but due to limited budget and the terms of the venue where some of the staff necessary for the event were included in the venue hire, there was just 7 external employment. The staff will be managed according to the unitary theory, people needed in running of the event and their expected responsibilities are as follows:

      Comedian: Sunjai Arif is a comedian and comedy promoter available to perform at the event from nine pm to midnight. He will quickly wins over audiences with his confidence and warm personality, he is an engaging comedy story teller and covers tales about his family, speeding tickets and extremist rodents.

      2 outdoor promoters, will Distribute flyers for the event within the campus, the Luton Mall and around the Luton Library area.

      Online promoter,dedicated person to be in charge of creating a Facebook adverts and continuously updating it to create awareness.

      2 hostess will meet and greet the participants at the event, check the reservations and take them to the allocated table.

      Security: 2 security guards will be provided by the metro bar as stated in the terms and condition of the venue and should be sufficient to defend and control 200 people. Their main tasks will be door supervision, preventing any misconduct, provide firs aid in case of any emergency etc.

      Bar tenders: two bartends will be provided by Metro bar as stated in the terms and condition of the venue hire to run the bar in terms of selling drinks to the participants, behalf of metro bar.

      Duty manager: a duty manager will also be provided by metro bar to oversee the bartenders, managing the event to make sure every activity meets the standards of the venue also meet all health and safety regulations

      Cleaners (company): These persons will be in charge with cleaning after the event is finished and also, during the event and will be in charge of maintaining the toilets clean.

FINANCE

Finance is a broad term that describes two related activities: the study of how money is managed and the actual process of acquiring needed funds.(investopedia.com) Since the event is a cost event there was a need of budgeting to identify all the expenses, to see which cost involved in hosting the event and the potential revenue to be generated from the event.

Budgeting

A budget is an estimation of revenue and expenses over a specified future period of time; it is compiled and re-evaluated on a periodic basis. There are two major types of budgets: static budgets and flexible budgets. A static budget remains unchanged over the life of the budget. A flexible budget has a relational value to certain variables. Both types of budgets are useful to management. A static budget evaluates the effectiveness of the original budgeting process, while a flexible budget provides deeper insight into business operations. The type of budget of our event is a flexible budget, the budget for our event are as follows:

1. Fixed cost: is an expense or cost that does not change with an increase or decrease in the number of goods or services produced or sold. The event budget has the following fixed costs.

2. Variable cost: A variable cost is a corporate expense that changes in proportion with production output. Variable costs increase or decrease depending on a company’s production volume; they rise as production increases and fall as production decreases.

The event budget has the following variable costs per person.

Since the variable cost is per person, is now possible to find the total variable cost by multiplying the variable cost per person (£3.00) by the total number of people at the event (200). $3*200=\mathrm{\pounds }600$

The total cost for the event is total fixed cost (£1111) + total variable cost (£600) = £1711

3. Revenue: revenue can be defined as total amount of income generated by the sale of goods or services related to the company’s primary operations. The expected revenue of the event will be the sales of tickets, where 200 tickets will be expected to be sold at the price of £11 per ticket. Which means the expected revenue will be 200 multiply by £11 giving a total of £2,200 (200*£11=£2,200)

4. Profit: Profit is a financial benefit that is realized when the amount of revenue gained from a business activity exceeds the expenses, costs and taxes needed to sustain the activity.If the revenue exceeds the costs will exceed as well (revenue – total costs = profit/loss). In case of the event, there was a profit of £160. (£2200 – £ 1711 = £489).After finding the profit, ispromising to calculate the profit margin, which represent the percentage of revenue that exceed the total cost involved in production and is calculated by dividing profit by revenue then multiply it by100% $\left(\begin{array}{c}\frac{\mathrm{profit}}{\mathrm{revenue}}*100\%=\mathrm{profit\; margin}\\ \end{array}\right)$

   . The event profit margin is= $\left(\frac{489}{2200}*100\%\right)=22\%$

   , which means 22% of the revue exceed the costs.

5. Break Even: breakeven point is the point of node between revenue and total cost. In extra words, when the total revenue is equivalent to the total fixed cost and it can be calculated by dividing total cost by contribution which is calculated be finding the dissimilarity between the price of sale and variable cost per product. ( $\frac{\mathrm{ total\; fixed\; cost}}{\mathrm{sale\; price}–\mathrm{variable\; cost\; per\; product}})$

   the event breakeven point is = ( $\frac{1111}{11–3})=138.87$

   ) which means,139 tickets must be sell to be in break even in other words, any sales below shows  loss likewise any sales above demonstrate a profit.

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Appendices

Appendix 1

Appendix 2