Trade Fair Case Study

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Trade fair refers to a large event where various companies from a specific industry, gather for diverse marketing purposes. It provides the opportunity for a company to communicate with its potential customers, suppliers, distributors and other crucial stakeholders through face-to-face contact. Trade fair is also known as trade show, exhibition or exposition. They are theoretically slightly different but they are being used interchangeably nowadays and this is applied in this paper as well. (AUMA, 2015; Cambridge Dictionary Online, 2015; Rana, 2002, p.1; www.globalnegotiator.com, 2015)
Trade fairs generate multibillion dollars worldwide. It is estimated that there are approximately 31,000 exhibitions taking place every year with almost 4.5 …show more content…

Usually, firms’ top management would like to see measurable results of investments, especially when it concerns high expense. However, effectiveness of trade fair participation might be difficult to evaluate, due to the long period of time needed for a realisation of results and the inability to relate sales back to the origin of customers’ initial contact at the fairs. Even though some exhibitors fail to assess the value of trade fairs for their organisation, they still participate in trade fairs due to market pressure and the presence of the firm’s competitors at the fairs without having a systematic plan to approach the company’s objectives of trade show participation. (Engblom, 2014, pp.5-6; Rana, 2002, …show more content…

The exhibitions of the Tourism Industry fall into this category as well. Tourism products are complicated in their nature. They comprise different components from several industries, namely accommodation, transportation, gastronomy, entertainment etc. to create tourists’ experiences as a whole (Gautam, 2014). Each component is interdependent with one another and that affects the difficulty in building image, promotion, control etc. Moreover, the main characteristic of tourism products is intangibility, which means the products cannot be touched, smelled or tried before the time of purchasing and consuming (Kaiser, 2012). Tourism products are also inseparable, that is, they are produced and consumed at the same time (Kaiser, 2012; Malra, 2011). Therefore, tourism products, which are presented at the fairs, are actually only the promise of experiences or services at the destination through the uses of brochures, presentations and the imitations of destinations. Consequently, visitors at travel trade shows do not have an opportunity to see or touch the real products in which they are interested, unlike the products of other industries. From that point, it is curious that the exhibitors still participate in tourism fairs. What advantages do they gain from the participation?
Nowadays, there are hundreds of travel

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