How to select an effective exhibition for your visit?

How to choose the exhibition that will meet your needs: will help to get acquainted with new products, to find real suppliers or customers, to conclude contracts, to evaluate the market condition?

What should be the algorithm to select an exhibition from a professional’s perspective?
What tools can you use?

Let us consider a particular situation. Picture, that you are in the deep well pumps business. Since you are a businessman, your aim is to make a profit. At some point an idea occurs to you: maybe I should visit a specialized exhibition. What will be your next steps? Will the present-day industry assist you in selecting an effective exhibition, will it satisfy your need to make a profit?

To find an exhibition on a certain subject, you can be offered the following:

Having spent some of your time, you may find information on the number of visitors, exhibitors, participating countries and the net space of a certain exhibition. However, this information is quite limited and cannot provide an objective picture of the exhibitions that you are interested in, and thus will not allow you to make a reasonable and competent choice.

Then, what tools will help you to see the real picture and to make a decision to visit the exhibition?

1. Exhibition Audit

There are many ways to determine the success rate of an exhibition. According to the research, an unbiased comparative analysis of its statistical parameters is one of the most professional ways.

Let us take an example. Picture that there are two exhibitions on your subject, last year one of them had 150 exhibitors, while the other had 500 exhibitors who showcased their goods and services. If you were a visitor, which exhibition would you prefer?

The choice is obvious, and the exhibition organizers realize it, that is why they often overstate their statistical parameters.

To obtain reliable information about an exhibition’s statistical parameters – use the exhibition audit data.

You can find out about accurate exhibition parameters, such as exhibition space, the number of foreign and domestic exhibitors, the number of specialist visitors on our web-site in Exhibition Audit Reports. The exhibition audit data will allow you to evaluate the scale of the event, the representation of foreign and domestic exhibitors, visitors’ interest from both foreign and domestic specialists, and see the dynamics of its statistical parameters, if the exhibition took place more than once.

2. Russian National Exhibition Rating

In 2013 the Russian National Exhibition Rating of 2011-2012 was launched in Russia. It is another tool for selecting an exhibition on the subject of your interest.

The rating participants have passed the exhibition statistics audit, and thus have obtained statistical parameters confirmed by the auditor: net space, the number of visitors, exhibitors, and participating countries. The credibility of this data is guaranteed by an audit in accordance with the UFI rules.

The events are ranked in the following nominations according to their statistics:

The rating is compiled in the beginning of each calendar year, and it includes all exhibitions audited last year and/or the year before the last year. For example, Russian National Exhibition Rating of 2011-2012 comprised exhibitions that passed the audit in 2011 and 2012. All in all it has 144 exhibitions divided into 48 categories according to their subjects.

Based on the information about net space, foreign participation, the number of exhibitors and visitors, you can compare exhibitions and select for yourself the most effective event among the exhibitions on the subject of your interest.

3. Audit of Visitors Purchasing Power

Audit of Visitors Purchasing Power is a tool that allows evaluating the quantity and quality of buyers who visited a given exhibition, namely, the sums of contracts concluded by the visitors within 6 months after the exhibition, including the contracts with the exhibitors from that particular exhibition.

Here is an example from a Research Note based on an Audit of Visitors Purchasing Power.

Research Note based on the Audit of Visitors Purchasing Power of “MIPS 2012/Protection, Security, Fire Safety” (fragment)

In 2012, representatives of 7,384 companies visited the exhibition. Among them 4,900 companies (66.0%) were from Moscow/Moscow region, 259 companies (4.0%) were from St. Petersburg/Leningrad region, and 2,225 companies (30.0%) represented other Russian regions.

The professional interests of the companies that visited the event in 2012 were concentrated in the following areas: goods and services for safety provision (63.4%), trade (23.6%), construction/real estate (8.7%).

According to the auditor’s survey, from May till mid-September of 2012, 3,413 unique companies that visited the exhibition (46.2% of respondents) signed contracts to purchase equipment and safely systems.

The scope of purchase contracts signed in the research period (May - mid-September of 2012) looks as follows:

Table 1. Breakdown of respondents’ answers to the question, “What was the value of the contracts signed to purchase equipment and safety systems?” during May - mid-September of 2012 (percentage is given from the number of respondents who signed contracts during the research period)

Purchase diapason Companies that signed contracts in the research period
Percentage of companies Quantity of companies
up to 500 k RUB 25,5% 871
500 k – 1 mln RUB 21,8% 743
1 – 5 mln RUB 21,3% 728
5 – 10 mln RUB 6,7% 229
10 – 25 mln RUB 3,3% 114
25 – 50 mln RUB 0,4% 14
Found it difficult/refused to answer 20,9% 714
Total number of companies that signed purchase contracts 100% 3 413

The estimated value of all the contracts concluded by the visitors of “MIPS 2012/Protection, Security, Fire Safety” during the first 5.5 months after the end of the exhibition is within the interval from 7,503.2 mln to 9,583.9 mln RUB with the confidence coefficient of 80%.

The estimated value of the contracts concluded by the exhibition visitors with its exhibitors during the first 5.5 months after the end of the exhibition is within the interval from 6,801.7 mln to 8,857,4 mln RUB with the confidence coefficient of 80%. Thus, the fundamental sum of contracts to purchase equipment and safely systems (90%) falls on the contracts signed with the exhibitors. Hence, the exhibition served as an effective platform for establishing mutually beneficial partnerships.

The following sections of the exhibition turned out to be the most attractive for investment:

Table 2. Investment potential of subject sections of the exhibition “MIPS 2012/Protection, Security, Fire Safety”

Subject sections All signed contracts Contracts signed with the exhibitors
Number of companies Total visitor investment Number of companies Total visitor investment
Closed-Circuit Television Systems / Video Monitoring 1 219 2887.6 mln – 4485.1 mln RUB 1 044 2764.4 mln -4412.2 mln RUB
Fire Safety. Rescue Equipment. Labour Protection 695 1241.6 mln – 2085.7 mln RUB 536 811.8 mln – 1422.9 mln RUB
Burglar Alarm 650 840.0 mln - 1457.4 mln RUB 554 799.6 mln – 1437.3 mln RUB
Access Control Systems / Identification 506 754.5 mln – 1196.3 mln RUB 462 681.2 mln – 1119.8 mln RUB

For people in business numbers are often more eloquent than any words. Doesn’t this exhibition represent an effective sales channel? Shouldn’t all companies that have popular goods in these market sectors look closer at it?

Here is a recommended mechanism for a professional selection of an exhibition, find answers to the following questions:

Comments:

  1. Confidence coefficient is a statistical term that defines the probability of the true value of the measurand X falling into the given confidence interval, where the confidence interval is built/found in the result of the conducted research.
  2. All provided data are rounded up to 100,000 rubles.