The marketing functions of the trade show system

Doctoral thesis (Ph.D.) – University of Nordland, 2014Trade shows have a long history that goes back to at least the early Middle Ages. In those times, trade shows played significant trading roles by facilitating bartered exchanges of textile goods, leather goods, spices and precious metals among long haul merchants. Trade shows have undergone significant changes since then and the contemporary trade show system supports far flung commercial activities. Today, trade shows facilitate purposeful interactions and collaborations among diverse market players, foster the formation of industrial and consumer markets, create substantial economic incentives to various economic actors and contribute to regional development. The purpose of this dissertation is to gain deeper understanding about the marketing functions of the contemporary trade show system. The dissertation takes, as its point of departure, the idea that the complexity of the functions of the trade show system can be best understood through analyzing the behavior and activities of the individual actors involved. To this effect, the dissertation singled out trade show exhibitors, trade show visitors and trade show organizers – the three most important actors of the trade show system – and investigated different aspects of their behavior and activities. This was accomplished by designing and conducting a series of empirical studies, which generated several valuable and interesting insights about the marketing functions of the trade show system and the behavior and activities of the main actors inside it. The dissertation makes two substantive strands of theoretical contribution to the trade show literature. The first strand of contributions comes in the form of an integrative conceptual synthesis of three theoretical perspectives: the exhibitor perspective, the visitor perspective and the organizer perspective. The synthesis is based on an exhaustive review and synthesis of the trade show literature around three core themes consisting of profile, motivation and effectiveness. The second strand of contributions comes in the form of a series of detailed empirical studies which are published in different scientific journals. The purpose of the empirical studies was addressing the main research questions posed in the dissertation and shedding some useful light on different aspects of the behavior and activities of trade show exhibitors, trade show visitors and trade show organizers

A systematic review of the trade show marketing literature: 1980–2014

Accepted manuscript version. Published version at http://doi.org/10.1016/j.indmarman.2016.11.001. License CC BY-NC-ND 4.0.The trade show marketing literature has been growing over the past decades, attracting a steady stream of research and journal publications. However, this body of research has not been subject to a systematic literature review. Accordingly, the purpose of this article is to provide a systematic review of the trade show marketing literature with the aim of delineating its current state, trends, gaps and inconsistencies. To this end, multiple electronic databases were searched and 91 trade show articles published in 24 marketing journals were extracted. The extracted articles were carefully analyzed with the help of a comprehensive classification framework focusing on broad thematic, theoretical and methodological dimensions. The findings revealed that: (a) trade show research is marked by inconsistencies that concern core thematic issues, such as trade show participation modes, trade show activity stages and trade show performance; (b) trade show research is atheoretical for the most part, but has become increasingly theory oriented in recent years; and (c) trade show research is heavily dependent on a combination of cross-sectional designs and surveys, with limited application of other designs and data collection approaches. Building on these findings, the review proposes an extensive research agenda to help move the trade show marketing literature forward

Identifying factors affecting consumers purchase incidence at retail trade shows

The purpose of this article is to examine variables influencing purchase incidences at retail trade shows. To this end, retailer and consumer related antecedent variables are proposed. The retailer related variables are represented by store environmental cues of sales staff services, store atmosphere and product assortment. The consumer related variables are represented by impulse buying tendency and perceived time pressure. Drawing on relevant literature, hypotheses are developed to link each of these variables to purchase incidence. Data were collected using questionnaire from shoppers (N=95) at a large retail trade show. The hypotheses were tested using partial least square path modeling. The findings indicate that consumers’ favorable evaluation of retailers’ sales staff services, store atmosphere and product assortment led to more purchase incidences. The findings about the consumer related variables indicate that impulse buying tendency led to more purchase incidences whereas perceived time pressure led to fewer purchase incidences. Drawing on these results, several implications for practice and research are suggested

On the collective efficacy of social media teams

Author's accepted version (postprint).This is an Accepted Manuscript of an article published by Emerald in Marketing Intelligence & Planning on 07/10/2020.Available online: https://www.emerald.com/insight/content/doi/10.1108/MIP-03-2020-0118/full/pdf?title=on-the-collective-efficacy-of-social-media-teamsacceptedVersio

Managing Trade Show Campaigns: Why Managerial Responsibilities Matter?

Author's accepted version (post-print).This is an Accepted Manuscript of an article published by Taylor & Francis in Journal of Promotion Management on 10/05/2012, available online: http://www.tandfonline.com/10.1080/10496491.2012.668434.This article examined the relationship between managerial responsibilities for important trade show tasks and the marketing performance of exhibiting firms. Drawing theoretical insights from the functionalist perspective of managerial roles and organizational role theory, this article proposed and validated theory based, multiple, task-managerial responsibility linkages using a large international b2b trade show as a context. The empirical results indicated that the marketing performance of exhibiting firms was enhanced when (a) middle managers were assigned the trade show objective setting task, (b) lower and middle managers were involved in the trade show selection decision and (c) lower managers executed the booth management task. The paper concluded by discussing the theoretical and practical implications of these findings

Importance Performance Analysis as a Trade Show Performance Evaluation and Benchmarking Tool

Author's accepted version (post-print).The purpose of this study is to introduce importance performance analysis as a trade show performance evaluation and benchmarking tool. Importance performance analysis considers exhibitors’ performance expectation and perceived performance in unison to evaluate and benchmark trade show performance. The present study uses data obtained from exhibitors of an international trade show to demonstrate how importance performance analysis can be used to evaluate and benchmark trade show performance. The study discusses the normative and the theoretical implications of the proposed method