About the future of trade shows

Last week’s newsletter about the future of trade shows generated some interesting responses. Here is a sample:

“It is absolutely true that there are many online opportunities to pick up the same information that one gets at trade shows, but how does one budget the time to take advantage of these opportunities? Few people are afforded sufficient uninterrupted time in the office to really do their homework. Even with the possibility of downloading a podcast and listening to it while commuting, there are just too many other things vying for attention – and information comes out too sporadically, with vendors playing leapfrog, so fractured attention plus fractured information yields an incomplete or muddy picture. It seems to me that a significant piece of the value of a trade show is that for the duration, the attendee has the rare luxury of budgeting his or her primary attention on one narrow area. There may indeed be more cost-efficient ways of doing this, but in a very real sense it is the cost that allows the attendee to focus attention…the sunk cost of paying for the ticket justifies putting those other things off for a day.”

“What a timely topic. We are a young but rapidly growing manufacturer [of] a network security appliance. Every organization wrestles with this question and we are no different. We are different in the sense we are in the early brand building stages. The numbers of attendees [at trade shows] is on a downward trend. However, those that still attend do not exhibit the same behavior of trade show attendees of the past. The point is, trade shows were a good place in which young companies could reach an audience. I am afraid that without that avenue and acceptance by the audience attending, new and innovative ideas designed to solve their problems and make their job easier will be gone. In the end, they will be left with a few overpriced solutions, that are not technically supported, and offer little imagination.”

Many thanks to those who provided their feedback on this article.