Due to the refraining from going out due to the coronavirus pandemic, various activities in business and personal life have been moved online. Exhibitions are one of them.
How have exhibitions been affected by the coronavirus pandemic, and what is the current situation? Also, what will the exhibition trends be like in the future?
Exhibition Sales Marketing Co., Ltd. conducted a survey of 106 business people who had experience exhibiting at trade shows.
77.4% of respondents said they would like to continue exhibiting at real exhibitions.
The graph below shows the answers to the question, “Do you want to continue exhibiting at trade shows as a sales/promotional measure for your company’s products and services?”
A total of 77.4% said “I want to exhibit more than before” (18.0%), “I want to exhibit as usual” (31.1%), and “I will continue to exhibit even though I will reduce the number of times” (28.3%).
It can be seen that most business people who have experience exhibiting have the intention to continue exhibiting, albeit to varying degrees.
The graph below shows the results of business people who answered “I will continue exhibiting, although I will reduce the number of times I exhibit” or “I don’t want to exhibit” to give their reasons.
As expected, face-to-face measures posed the greatest risk due to the impact of the new coronavirus.
Conversely, if there were no impact from the new coronavirus, many business people would be proactive about exhibiting.
Businesspeople who answered, “I will continue to exhibit at a reduced number of times,” or “I do not want to do it,” said, “If there is no concern about the spread of the new coronavirus and we can expect the same results as before, we will continue to exhibit as usual.” The answers to the question “Do you want to exhibit?” are shown below.
The fact that more than half of the respondents answered “yes” indicates that many business people have an intention to exhibit at an exhibition.
More than 90% of respondents predicted that “results will decline” due to the coronavirus pandemic, and “new formats such as online collaboration are needed”
Overall, many businesspeople had the intention of continuing to exhibit at trade shows, but many were pessimistic about the results of trade shows.
Businesspeople who answered “I want to exhibit more than before” or “I want to continue exhibiting as before” in the first question were asked “What kind of results do you expect compared to previous exhibitions?” The answers to this question are as follows.
Almost half of the respondents, 46.2%, answered that “results are expected to be worse than in the past,” which exceeded the number of respondents who said “results are expected to be the same as before.”
Next, business people who answered that “results are predicted to be lower than in the past” were asked, “In order to achieve the same or even better results than in the past, we need a new form of exhibition, such as an online exhibition.” “Do you think so?” and received the following responses.
The total number of respondents who answered “Strongly Agree” (58.3%) and “Agree” (37.5%) was 95.8%, indicating that most respondents felt there was a need for a new format for exhibitions.
Most businesspeople are interested in “completely online exhibitions” and “combined online and offline exhibitions”
Possible exhibitions during the coronavirus pandemic include “fully online exhibitions” and “combined online and offline exhibitions.”
Business people’s reactions to these are as follows. First, let’s take a look at “completely online exhibitions”.
A total of 73.6% said they were “very interested” (29.3%) and “somewhat interested” (44.3%).
Next, let’s take a look at the response results regarding “online and offline exhibitions”.
A total of 83.0% of respondents were “very interested” (32.1%) and “somewhat interested” (50.9%).
Many business people are interested in exhibiting at online exhibitions, and it has become clear that there is a need for new exhibition formats that effectively utilize online to avoid the risks of the coronavirus pandemic.