Understanding Conference
Pricing
A Look at IEEE Practices & Techniques
For Effective Conference Pricing
Prepared by
IEEE Sales and
Marketing Department
& Technical Activities
Department
November, 2007
CONFIDENTIALITY AND NONDISCLOSURE STATEMENT AND AGREEMENT
This report is the property of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, Inc.
(IEEE). The report contains proprietary information of IEEE and is solely for the use
of IEEE Volunteers and Staff. This confidentiality and Nondisclosure Statement and
Agreement is for the purpose of protecting such confidential information form being
made available and disclosed to unauthorized persons.
© 2007 The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, Inc.
Contents
1.
Executive Summary
2.
Pricing Comparisons
3.
Registration Fees are 24% of Total Travel Cost
4.
Difference Between Member and NonMember Fees
5.
Conclusion
Appendix 1: List of Competitor Conferences
Appendix 2: Methodology
IEEE Practices & Techniques for Effective Conference Pricing
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1.
Executive Summary
Why this paper?
In 2001, TAB Financial Committee asked the IEEE Sales & Marketing Department to
work with the Technical Activities staff to provide a study for conference pricing, similar
to the annual Journal Pricing Study (JPS) which was the first such study ever produced at
the IEEE.
More than 104,000 professionals are expected to attend approximately 555 IEEE
conferences in 2007, and the fee revenue from these conferences represents 25% of the
total revenue for the IEEE. In 2006, conference revenue was approximately $86.5
million. It is, after publications, the largest business of the IEEE.
As we’ve seen in the past, registration fees often account for as little as 24% of the total
travel-related costs absorbed by conference attendees. It would seem logical then that
since the other 76% of travel expenses are beyond the conference itself, the IEEE can
increase its fees competitively without necessarily compromising attendance at the
conference.
Beyond remaining competitive in pricing, conference organizers should consider raising
registration fees in order to improve the quality of their programs. Increased income may
allow for better speakers, adding meal functions or receptions, and enhance even the
smallest details of the event. These improvements enhance the quality of the conference
thus increasing its value to attendees.
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2.
Pricing Comparisons
The average registration fee for members to attend an IEEE conference
is less than our competitors
IEEE conference fees averaged $451 for
advanced registration for members as compared
to $589 for their competitors. This means that
IEEE conference fees are at 77% of the
competitions’ conference price for advance
registration of members.
Member Conference Pricing Comparison
IEEE
Competitor
Avg
Fee
Avg Fee
Ratio
Member
Advanced
$451
$589
77%
Member
On-Site
$611
$701
87%
Similarly, the onsite registration for IEEE
conferences is at 87% of the competitors’
conference price. The average onsite fee for a member to attend an IEEE conference was
only $611 while it would cost that same member $701 to attend a competitor’s conference.
The average registration fee for nonmembers to attend an IEEE
conference is less than our competitors
The average conference price for a
nonmember to pre-register for an IEEE
conference was $623, but it would cost
that same person $661 when they attend
a competitor’s conference. This means
NonMember
that IEEE advanced fees for
Advanced
$623
$661
94%
nonmembers is 94% of its competition.
NonMember
If that same person were to register
On-Site
$740
$776
95%
while onsite at the conference, the
average IEEE fee of $740 would only be 95% of the average competitor’s conference
price of $776.
NonMember Conference Pricing Comparison
IEEE Competitor
Avg
Fee
Avg Fee
Ratio
IEEE Practices & Techniques for Effective Conference Pricing
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3.
Registration Fees are 24% of Total Travel Cost
While considering whether or not to increase registration fees, conference organizers
should understand that fees are only a portion of the total trip costs that their attendees
will incur. On the average in 2007, advance conference registration for IEEE members
accounted for 24% of total expenses:
ƒ
ƒ
ƒ
ƒ
ƒ
Roundtrip airfare 1
Hotel (3 nights) 2
Car rental (3 days)2
Meals (3 days)2
Registration fee
Total
$ 474
$ 453
$ 257
$ 222
$ 451
$1,857
Compone nts of Trav e l Costs
Registration
24%
Meals
12%
Car
14%
Airfare
26%
Hotel
24%
If advance member registration fees were increased by the maximum recommendation of
16% in the table above, they would account for less than 27% of the total trip cost. This
strongly enforces the belief that reasonable increases to registration fees would not likely
be the determining factor in someone’s choice whether or not to attend a conference.
Assuming the average engineer earned approximately $112,860 a year 3 , their employer
invested $451-$564 4 for each day that they participated at an IEEE conference.
Undoubtedly the decision to send an engineer to a conference is based on the belief that
its value outweighs its cost. And while something as minimal as a $20 increase to
registration fees would represent around 1% of the engineer’s participation at a 4-day
conference, it would mean more than $2 million in revenue to the IEEE.
1
Source: Topaz International Ltd., National Database Average Airfares for domestic US (2007)
Source: Business Travel News, 2007 Corporate Travel Index for domestic US
3
Source: IEEE-USA Salary Survey (median primary income for 2007)
4
Assuming 200-250 working days per year
2
IEEE Practices & Techniques for Effective Conference Pricing
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4. Difference Between Member and NonMember Fees
An ongoing practice of IEEE conference pricing is to make the difference between the
member and nonmember rates equal to or greater than the cost of IEEE annual
membership as this strategy helps to reinforce the value message of the IEEE. Based on
the average budgeted registration fees of all IEEE-sponsored conferences, this strategy is
not practiced consistently:
IEEE Member vs. NonMember Registration Fee Comparison
Member
Non
Member
Difference
Avg US
Membership
Difference
Advanced
Registration
$451
$623
$172
$168
-$4
On-Site
Registration
$611
$740
$129
$168
$39
Not all conferences are fully sponsored by the IEEE so our input into pricing may be
limited in some cases.
IEEE Practices & Techniques for Effective Conference Pricing
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5.
Conclusion
There are four (4) factors which organizers must consider when pricing their conference:
1. Cost of hosting the conference
2. Competitive fees
3. Inflationary increases to non fee expenses such as airfare, hotels, etc.
4. The difference between member and nonmember fees should minimally equal the
cost of IEEE membership.
Before evaluating if registration fees are competitive, conference organizers must first be
certain that those fees minimally cover the costs associated with organizing and hosting
the conference itself. Once the breakeven threshold has been achieved, conference
organizers can then manage the registration fees based on the knowledge of their
attendees, perceived value of the conference, economic conditions, etc.
IEEE conferences continue to offer high quality information that is often priced
significantly lower than our competition. Certainly our registration fees can be raised
significantly yet still be less than non-IEEE conferences, but consideration must be given
to the other factors that contribute to the overall travel expenses that an attendee must
absorb.
As conference organizers work diligently to price their conferences competitively, they
must also keep an eye towards the difference between their member and nonmember
rates. The value of IEEE conferences is not found solely in comparison to our
competitors, but is also in the financial benefit it offers to IEEE members.
Competitive pricing is essential to the success of IEEE conferences and to the IEEE
itself. For every $10 increase to registration fees, an additional $1 million is added to the
bottom line. This will allow the IEEE to become financially stronger and be better
equipped to meet the challenges of its ongoing mission.
IEEE Practices & Techniques for Effective Conference Pricing
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Appendix 1: List of Conferences Used in the Competitor Index
ACM SIGCOMM - Data Communications Festival
AIAA Guidance, Navigation and Control Conference & Exhibit
AIAA Modeling & Simulation Conference & Exhibit
American Control Conference (ACC)
Annual Electronics Materials Conference
Annual ISA POWID/EPRI
Annual Meeting of the Acoustical Society of America
Annual Mtg for Section for Magnetic Resonance Technologists SMRT
Antenna Measurement Techniques Association (AMTA) Conference
CTIA Wireless
EOS Diffractive Optics
ESEC/FSE
European Conference and Exhibition on Optical Communication
European Conference on Circuit Theory & Design
European Conference on Information Systems ECIS
European Conferences on Biomedical Optics + SPIE
European Microwave Integrated Circuits Conference (Formerly GAAS®) EuMW
European Wireless
EuroPES Power & Energy Systems in Spain
Genetic & Evolutionary Computation GECCO
IASTED Intl Conf on Internet & Multimedia Systems & Applications (IMSA)
IASTED Intl Conference on Communications Systems & Networks
IASTED Intl Conference on Intelligent Systems & Control
IASTED Software Engineering & Applications Conference
ICATPP Conf on Astroparticle, Particle, Space Physics, Detectors and Medical Physics
Applications
IIE Annual Conference
Institution of Engineering and Technology Conference on Automotive Electronics (IET)
Internal Combustion Engine Division Conference (ICED)
International Conference Biomedical Engineering BIOMED
International Conference Electrical Power Quality and Utilisation
International Conference on Automated Software Engineering (ASE)
Int’l Conference on Concurrent Engineering: Research and Applications
International Conference on Digital Telecommunications ICDT
International Conference on ELECTRIC POWER SYSTEMS, HIGH VOLTAGES,
ELECTRIC MACHINES
International Conference on Electrical Engineering ICEE
International Conference on Information Fusion
International Conference on Medical Image Computing and Computer Assisted
Intervention (MICCAI)
IEEE Practices & Techniques for Effective Conference Pricing
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Appendix 1 continued
International Conference on Modeling and Simulation of Microsystems
International Conference on Reliable Software Technologies Ada-Europe
International Conference on Software Engineering Advances (ICSEA)
International Conference on Software Engineering and Knowledge Engineering
International Conference on Supercomputing
International Energy Conversion Engineering Conference (IECEC)
International Semiconductor Conference (CAS) – former Annual Semiconductor
Conference
International Superconductive Electronics Conference (ISEC)
Int'l Computer Conference (HKICC)
Int'l Conf on Circuits, Signals, and Systems CSS
Intl Conf on Industrial & Engineering Applications of Applied Intelligence
Int'l Conf on Signal & Image Processing (SIP)
Int'l conference and exhibition on computer graphics and interactive techniques
(SIGGRAPH)
Intl Conference on Autonomous Agents and Multi Agent Systems AAMAS
Int'l Conference on Computer Communications and Networks (ICCCN)
Intl Conference on Intelligent Data Engineering & Automated Learning IDEAL
Int'l Conference on ITS Telecommunications
Intl Conference on Offshore Mechanics & Arctic Engineering
Int'l Conference on Signal Processing, Pattern Rec (SPPRS 2002)
Int'l Symposium on Remote Sensing
Int'l Telecommunications Energy Conference
ISA EXPO
NanoBusiness Conference
Nanotech The Nanotechnology Conference and Trade Show (NSTI)
Nonlinear Dynamics of Electronic Systems NDES2007
Offshore Technology Conference
OptoElectronics & Communications Conference
PIERS-Progress on Electromagnetic Research Symposium
Power Electronics Technology Exhibition & Conference
Pulsed Power Symposium
SAC Annual ACM Symposium on Applied Computing
Small Engine Technology Conference (SETC)
Solar Power (SEPA)
St Petersburg Intl Conference on Navigation Systems
Thirteenth Canadian Semiconductor Technology Conference (CSTC)
Wireless & Optical Communications Conference WOC
World Congress on Intelligent Transport Systems
XML Conference & Expo
IEEE Practices & Techniques for Effective Conference Pricing
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Appendix 2: Methodology
Identifying a competitor – Unlike the journals used in the JPS, conference
themes change from year to year. A professional who opted for a
competitor conference in 2001 may not have had that same dilemma in 2003
because the subject of the conference may have been irrelevant to their
interest.
Another factor that complicates competitor identification is that few people
have the opportunity to attend more than one conference in a particular field
of interest, so they aren’t familiar with whom the competition really is.
When IEEE volunteers were asked to identify competitors for this CPS, very
few were able to name a conference they deemed to be a true competitor.
Our challenge for this and future conference pricing studies was to create a
stable methodology that will allow consistent benchmarking between IEEE
conferences and its competitors. The solution was to create an index where
data from all competitor conferences would be consolidated and used as a
single reference point. So instead of each IEEE conference being compared
to several specific competitor conferences, they will be compared to the
competitor index.
The criteria for a competitor conference to be included in the index is simply
that it is technical (electrical/electronic engineering) in nature, and that it
occurs on an annual basis. Occasionally, some competitor conferences will
drop out of the index for one reason or another, and certainly more
conferences will be added to the index to keep it up to date. This will allow
for a stable base that is both consistent and dynamic.