Author(s): Mansi Kapoor and Rakesh Mohan Joshi
Trade shows are major business events and act as a significant medium for promoting industrial products. Firms must devise strategies to engage current and prospective attendees. Through well-orchestrated marketing activities, trade show organizers can engage with exhibitors at trade shows, enhancing their trade show performance. The paper highlights a significant contribution by employing the nascent literature on customer engagement within the B2B domain. The paper tests the model of marketing activities of trade shows on engagement impacting exhibitor performance with the help of quantitative research methods. The study synthesizes a three-stage framework of marketing activities namely pre-show, at-show, and post-show, and leverages 10 zero-order constructs to gauge customer engagement and seven statements to evaluate trade show performance. Based on a cross-sectional dataset, the study employs quantitative surveys from 349 exhibitors from multi-sectoral trade shows. The correlations and mediating effects are examined using Structural Equation Modelling (SEM) demonstrating the positive impact of marketing activities on trade show performance, underlying the mediating role of customer engagement. The results offer comprehensive managerial implications about how exhibitors' performance can be improved through their real-time engagement during the three stages of marketing activities undertaken by trade show organizers. The paper provides a comprehensive analysis of these dynamics, which helps practitioners in the field and paves the way for future efforts to optimize trade show strategies.