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Paul Herbig: Professor of Marketing, Graduate School of International Trade and Business Administration, Texas A&M International University, Laredo, Texas, USA
Brad O'Hara: Department of Marketing and Finance, Southeastern Louisiana University, Hammond, Louisiana, USA
Fred Palumbo: Department of Marketing, Sysims School of Business, Yeshiva University, New York, USA
Trade shows/fairs - a review
Trade shows, trade fairs, expositions, scientific/technical conferences, conventions; the name may vary but the basic function of the activity represents a major industry marketing event. They are "events that bring together, in a single location, a group of suppliers, distributors and related services who set up physical exhibits of their products and services from a given industry or discipline" (Black, 1986). During the exhibition business boom of the 1980s, the number of exhibitions held annually in the USA doubled from 1976 to 1986 (Browning and Adams, 1988). One-third of the 57 US shows surveyed by Exhibit Surveys, Inc (Swandby et al., 1990) either did not exist in 1979 or were in their infancy. In 1988 worldwide, over 100,000 firms exhibited at some 11,000 business trade shows and spent over $9 billion (Murphy, 1990). According to the Trade Show Bureau (1994), the number of trade shows in the USA and Canada grew from 3,289 to 4,316, the number of attendees from 60 million to 85 million, and the number of exhibiting companies from 1 million to 1.3 million. The Trade Show Bureau also projects a growth in trade show activity of 35 percent during the remainder of the 1990s. Trade Show Bureau (1994) estimates that the trade show industry itself generates $53 billion a year to the US GDP. Comdex '95, the largest trade show in the USA, held annually over Thanksgiving week in Las Vegas, had 220,000 attendees in 1995, up over 10 percent from 1994's 190,000 attendees.
The trade show medium plays a much larger role in Europe and other foreign countries than in the USA. For example, attendance at the top 100 events in Europe averages 77,000 visitors versus about 22,000 in the USA (Trade Show Bureau Newsletter, June 1992). Trade shows accounted for one-fifth of the typical American business market promotional budget, second only to personal selling activity and ahead of print advertising and direct mail (Jacobson, 1990) while in...