Blog#6: Conduct market research for a potential event.
December is a month filled with events. The holiday season is upon us and with that comes many things to do. One event in December that is always exciting here in San Diego is December Nights in Balboa Park.
Balboa Park December Nights took place for the 35th consecutive year on Friday, Dec. 6, 3-11pm, and Saturday, Dec. 7, noon-11pm. As always, the event brought families and friends together to spread holiday joy, learn more about the cultural value of Balboa Park and kick-off the “most wonderful time of the year.”
Participating Balboa Park museums open their doors free of charge from 5-9 pm both evenings and more than 350,000 visitors are expected to experience the joy of San Diego’s largest free community festival. Those who attend will participate in a truly multicultural experience, enjoying food, music and entertainment from around the world.
The target market for an event of this excalibur is for really supposed to reach anyone who wants to experience Christmas cheer. I believe the demographics for this event usually falls into the family category, however.
Conducting a SWOT for this event will help us get a bigger and better picture of how to improve this event.
Strengths:
- Has excellent resources to venues
- Volume of attendees grows every year
- Has a history within San Diego
Weaknesses:
- The event only lasts for two days (6th &7th)
- Parking is pretty much impossible
- Does the same thing every year. Some new ideas could be good for the festival
Opportunities:
- They could make this event last for 2, or even 3 weekends, and attract way more people towards the actual date of christmas.
- Improve parking by opening up the lots at SeaWorld, and doing some kind of sponsorship opportunity with SeaWorld.
- With new technology being discovered everyday, Balboa Park could add new features.
Threats:
- Injuries due to the capacity of the event holding 300,000 people.
- Competitors are doing similar events that could take some business
- People could be detoured from coming to December Nights just due to traffic
My SWOT analysis of December nights is completely due to my own opinion. There are many positives and negatives that happen to revolve around this event, but some would say the positive drown the negatives. If you can get past the enormous amounts of people, and terrible parking and traffic issues, and manage to make it into the park – you will truly experience something like a mini wonderland.
Rachel Claire Bradley 